


There But For

by daystarsearcher



Category: Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-12 14:38:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daystarsearcher/pseuds/daystarsearcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a little AU that's been rolling around my brain since I found out Eames used to work in Vice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ao3 A.N. #1: I'm moving this directly from fanfiction.net, with all my old notes and such intact. So be aware that if I reference some event in notes, it probably happened years ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A.N: "Matters of Trust" will be done (relatively) soon, so I needed something to alternate with 'MVAD.' You know, something with a little less bodily harm, to take the edge off. So I started this. 'Cause it's not like I have a really important research project I'm supposed to be doing or anything. *sigh*
> 
> Disclaimer: All of my knowledge of prostitution comes from popular culture and Wikipedia articles. I sincerely hope I don't offend anyone; please let me know if I do, or if this story contains any inaccuracies, and I will do my best to fix them while retaining the basic plot I have in mind. Oh yes, and still not claiming any credit or trying to make any money. Of course, that doesn't mean everyone's happy about it…
> 
> Eames: She's writing *WHAT?*
> 
> Goren: An AU fic where you're a hooker.
> 
> Eames: Does she *want* me to kill her?
> 
> Goren: Apparently so.
> 
> Eames: _(sigh)_ So what're you? A gigolo? A rent-boy? My pimp?
> 
> Goren: Oh, I'm a librarian.
> 
> Eames: What?! How come you get to be the librarian?
> 
> Goren: You want to be the librarian?
> 
> Eames: I'd rather be the librarian than the hooker!
> 
> Goren: So you'd rather I be the hooker? Wow, I'm flattered.
> 
> Eames: Bite me.
> 
> Goren: Okay, but it'll cost you extra…
> 
> Eames: Shut up. Just shut up.

On February 26, 2009, a crazy man gave Dutton a coat.

And everything changed.

xxxxx

The wind whipped around the edge of the charcoal buildings, each snowflake like a shard of glass scouring the concrete facades. It let out a flat, remorseless howling as it lashed out at the world, scraped alongside the street-faces of the buildings and slammed into the alley where a small form huddled against the icy brick.

Dutton blew on her fingers, the digits red and raw and stiff and shaking, then stuck her hands back under her armpits and hugged herself against the cold.

"Fuck!"

You really had to admire the versatility of that word. The economy. A single syllable, capable of being infused with the extreme of almost any emotion. A word for all occasions.

Fuck: it's not just for breakfast anymore.

…and when the cold got to the point where you were stranded in an alley mentally rhapsodizing about the word 'fuck' instead of actually, you know, fucking someone, it was probably time to admit that it was just too fucking (see! there, again!) cold for any john to risk freezing his dick off for some strange.

Cherry and Lara and Tawny—and that actually was her real name, you had to wonder, did her parents  _want_ her to become a hooker?—had split long ago. Cherry was the only one who did so for a client; Tawny had had to get home to her kids, and Lara had given up first of all. The girl was nineteen but looked younger: junkie-thin, the searing frost in the air had cut straight to her bones—not a long trip—and made them shiver so violently that she couldn't speak, her limbs jerking back and forth until she resembled nothing so much as an animated tangle of coat hangers.

 _Yeah, and you're such a sparkling picture of fitness and vigor yourself,_ Dutton thought.  _At least Lara has an excuse._

It was time to get out, Dutton knew that. Average run for a working girl was five years, give or take. Then you died, or accepted the fact that you were stuck until you died.

Fuck.

It had been time to get out for a little over two years now, at least. Ever since the Gage incident. And it had never been time to get in.

A particularly vicious gust of wind rushed around the corner into the alley, stabbing past the scanty protection of the faux-fur coat and mini-skirt and nearly sweeping her feet out from under her.

_If I ever find a john who gets turned on by snow pants and a parka, I think I'll do him for free._

The wind slammed into Dutton again, this time hard enough to knock her into a nearby snowdrift.

"Fuck!"

 _Seriously, who needs an expanded vocabulary when you have a word that can multitask like this?_ She struggled to her feet, heels slipping against the purchaseless ground. _I could never use another word in any conversation again. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fucking fucker fuck fucked fucks. I'm a regular fucktastic linguistic genius._

And now she was soaked. Great. Because there was nothing a john found sexier than pneumonia.

Okay, options. She wasn't too far from the rat hole she was currently calling home, but the heating system there was spotty at best. Dutton briefly considered making the seven-block trek down to where a painfully obvious undercover Vice sting was going on, and blatantly soliciting someone just for a chance to spend the night in a warm cell. But there was no way she was throwing away her hard-earned money on bail. Especially since—she did some quick mental calculations and, yep, that was right—the team on duty tonight would include Detectives Moran Junior and Copeland, who were total pigs, and would not include Jeffries, who liked to act like a hardass but who shared her sandwiches and coffee and could generally be persuaded to conveniently lose processing paperwork and let her go in the morning.

Alright, then, the library. It wouldn't close till ten, so if she snuck in— _and that'll be a piece of cake, because nothing says discretion like black leather and four inch heels—_ she could use the hand-dryer in the bathroom to thaw out somewhat and then catch a nap on one of the upper-level reading room couches. By the time she had to leave—unless someone found her first and threatened to call the cops—she should be warmed up enough to brave the rest of the trek home.

The library it was, then.

xxxxx

"Do you have someplace to go?"

Two very large sideways brown eyes no more than three inches from her own greeted Dutton as she awoke. She jerked away instinctively, her head hitting the back of the couch with a loud  _whumpf_ , her hands scrabbling against the fabric as she tried to sit up. It took a second to fit her first glimpse into a bigger picture: a very large man in a long black coat, foot swept behind him for balance as he tilted his upper body nearly ninety degrees to his left, staring at her as intently as if she were one of those Magic Eye puzzles.

"Do you have someplace to go?" he repeated, his voice soft. He acted as though he hadn't even noticed her freak-out—although, Dutton admitted as her heartbeat began to slow, when you went around impersonating Inspector Gumby you probably learned not to comment on the appropriateness of anyone else's behavior—

"I'll go," she said, swinging her legs off the couch. "I didn't mean to sleep so long—I don't do this often, it was just really cold, but I'll be going—"

"You don't have to." He'd backed up a little bit, but he was still crowding her. Dutton fought the slow wave of panic rising in her chest. "I…I know eighty-seven percent of streetwalking…commercial sex workers are homeless, or, or unstably housed—and if you do have a place, it's really storming out there—radio's saying a low of negative three Fahrenheit and you're, uh…not exactly dressed for…" he gestured vaguely at her get-up.

Dutton chanced a look away from the behemoth to the window. He wasn't lying. Shit. "My apartment's only a few blocks away. I can make it."

"Oh. Okay. Okay. But…you don't have to. If you don't want."

Shit shit shit. Alright, play along, and maybe this wouldn't be too bad. "I don't?"

"I mean, if you want, you can leave. I just…I mean, I'm sure you can, can take care of yourself, I just—this building's heated all night—we have to, for the books—and the couches in the staff room are a lot more comfortable. If you want to stay, you should hide in my office until Mrs. McGreer leaves—she's my boss—and then I can take you there. If you want."

Dutton looked at him for a moment, sizing up her options. She was alone in a building with him and an employer who would doubtless believe his version of events in any conflict; if she tried to run away he'd probably rape her and throw her out into the storm. At least this way it was still something like a business transaction.

At least this way she'd have some measure of control.

"Okay."

He smiled then, a bright little-boy smile, and her stomach churned.

He held out his hand. "My name's Robert, uh, well, Bobby. Bobby Goren."

She took it. "Dutton."

xxxxx

Dutton ran her fingers along the spines of the books in Robert Goren's office.  _Forgotten English. The Lost City of Z. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Simulcra & Simulcrum._

_Life is Elsewhere._

You could say that again.

"Do you want one?"

She hadn't heard him come up behind her and she jumped and cursed, startled.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"You surprised me, that's all," Dutton said, pasting a smile on her face.

"I should've walked louder—I—do you want one? I mean, I've finished them, so if you do—nights like this are probably slow for, um, commercial sex workers—"

"Why do you keep saying that?" she asked, as much to stem the flow of words as from actual curiosity.  _Just take me to the couch, fuck me, and leave._ "Commercial sex workers, I mean."

"Oh." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know. I guess it just—it just sounded nicer than most of the alternatives."

"'Prostitute' is fine. 'Hooker' is fine. 'Whore' is less than fine, but it's honest, and it doesn't make me sound like a goddamn robot on an assembly line."

He studied her face very seriously. "I'll keep that in mind."

xxxxx

He hadn't been lying about the couch, at least. Dutton sunk back into the downy blue cushions while Bobby ransacked the cabinets and staff lockers for suitable blankets. A girl could get used to this. If he wasn't too rough maybe she could see about making this a deal on a regular basis…

"And there were specialized categories, each with their own proper name: the  _chamaitypa'i—_ outdoor workers like you—"

On the other hand, she already really wanted to kill him.

"—the  _perepatetikes_  who met their customers while walking, and then worked in their houses, the  _gephyrides_ , who worked near the bridges…actually, I guess those could also apply to—I mean, anyway--"

It was insane. He was insane. She didn't know if it was a particularly geeky way of working himself up or what, but it was really getting on her nerves. If she did not shut his fucking mouth soon then—

_Whoa, girl. Remember how he's three times your size. The customer is always right._

"—now, the term  _devadasi_ originally described a religious practice of Hinduism in which girls were 'married' to a deity, and they enjoyed high social status, but with the declining status of Hindu temples they were gradually forced into a life of—"

In addition to being annoying as fuck, it was also a little…okay, she'd admit it, alarming. They were alone now. She didn't know the exact statistics—she was sure  _he_  did—but she did know hookers got more than their fair share of serial killings. And she'd already had that close call two years ago but sometimes lightning did strike twice, and Robert Goren knew way too many details about completely obscure aspects of the history of prostitution to be entirely normal.

"—and even in countries where it's legal, it's often illegal to advertise, like in Germany and—"

Well, she was stuck now. Dutton opened her eyes to stare at the ceiling, and spread her legs slightly.

"—while brothels and street soliciting are illegal in Rhode Island, but prostitution itself isn't considered—"

He seemed harmless.  _Isn't that what they always say when it comes out? "He was quiet and kept to himself. He seemed harmless." Fuck._ But he really did seem nonthreatening, just distressingly big and rather annoying and probably the kind of guy who'd start crying about his high school girlfriend after he came.

Hopefully she was right, and she'd get out of this with nothing more than a slight limp, a worn copy of  _The Mabinogi and Other Tales_ , and a ridiculous, ridiculous amount of knowledge about the history of all the different words ever devised for a person who fucked strangers for money.

"—widely legal in the United States until 1910 to 1915, when largely due to the influence of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union—"

It was all the more—well, impressive, if you wanted to be nice about it—given that he hadn't stopped talking since they left his office. And because it wasn't really in her best interests to piss him off, she'd smiled and nodded and done her best to seem interested in the fact that Civil War soldiers called the women they paid for 'hookers' to mock General Joseph Hooker, who had forbidden them to consort with ladies of the evening; that 'to prostitute' was derived from the Latin preposition  _pro_ and the verb  _statuere_ , making a literal translation of 'to expose' or 'to place up front;' that 'whore' came from the Old English  _hōra_ , which in turn came from the Indo-European root  _kā_  meaning 'desire;' that in Germany most hookers preferred  _Hure_  (whore) since they felt 'prostitute' was too bureaucratic sounding; that the word 'porn' actually came from the Greek word for prostitute,  _porne_ , derived from the verb for 'to sell,'  _pernemi_. And on and on and on and—

"—technically illegal, but tolerated by the Deadwood residents and officials until 1980—are you hungry?"

It took a moment to register that he had shifted gears from The Complete Goren Encyclopedia of Whore-dom. "Uh, a little." She was fucking starving.

"Well, if you want anything, there's stuff in the fridge—anything with a blue sticker is for the any of the staff, so you can help yourself to that…and anything with my name on it." Bobby smiled. "I hope you like pastrami."

Finally finishing his search, he handed her two tablecloths and a foot blanket. "I'm sorry…will this—"

"It'll be fine," Dutton said. She set them down at the edge of the couch and reclined again.

He looked at her a moment longer, his face unreadable, and then began to unbutton his coat. She took a deep breath. Hopefully he wasn't a breast man. One of her johns had gotten…overenthusiastic…last night, and her tits were still bruised and aching and sore.

_Deep breath, breathe slow and float away. You are not here. You are not here. No one can hurt you because you are not here._

He handed the coat to her.

She looked up at him, confused and jarred out of her mindset, and he began to gesticulate. "For a, another blanket. You can keep it, I have others at home and you…I mean, I know you can't streetwalk in it, but if there isn't any traffic you can wear it—keep warm…"

She gaped at him. "What are you wearing home?"

He shrugged. "My building's just next door, it'll take me thirty seconds to be back inside again—oh!" He swooped down at her, and Dutton felt her whole body lock together as she braced herself—and then he straightened up, pulling something from one of the coat pockets as he went. "Keys! Could be kind of important." He whirled them around his finger with a self-deprecating smile. "Uh—clock's over there, it has an alarm you can set—staff gets in at six, you can hide in my office again…library opens at seven but you could slip out before then…um, my room number's 308 if you need anything—oh, and bathrooms are just around the corner."

And with that, he raised his hand, gave an awkward little wave, and left.

Dutton stared at the door. "Well," she told it after a moment, "that was unexpected."

xxxxx

The alarm woke her at five-thirty, and she didn't even mind because fuck, she was full and warm and she couldn't even fucking remember the last time those two things had coincided, so she was just going to take a moment to appreciate it, okay?

She folded the tablecloths and foot blanket and put them back in basically the same general area she'd seen Bobby get them from. She wrapped herself in the coat and padded over to the fridge, deciding to grab a few more of his sandwiches for the road. She was cramming them into the coat pockets when she felt it.

A wallet.

She pulled it out. Brooks Brothers, brown leather, practically mint condition. Worth a couple hundred on the black market easy.

She opened it. Driver's license. Social security card. A gift card to Target. Over a hundred dollars in cash. Two credit cards. What appeared to be an antique ring.

…and all of it legally belonging to the one guy who'd actually been decent to her in recent memory.

"Aw,  _fuck_."

God, that word was useful.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eames: Bobby, if you do not stop humming "Lovely Ladies" _right this minute—_
> 
> Goren: Well, I could always move on to something from 'The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas'—
> 
> Eames: No.
> 
> Goren: A selection from 'Sweet Charity'—
> 
> Eames: No.
> 
> Goren: "I'm in Love With a Stripper"—
> 
> Eames: I HAVE A GUN.

"Here."

Bobby stumbled back a few paces from the wallet being shoved unceremoniously in his face. "Oh, thanks. Hi."

"You need to be more fucking careful with your stuff. I could've just taken this. Just because you felt sorry for me doesn't mean you get a free pass on being stupid. Some people would've just taken this to teach you a lesson."

"Oh." He blinked the sleep from his eyes. "Thank you for, um, not doing that."

"Take it!" The wallet came perilously close to whacking his nose. God, she didn't want to be here. She didn't want to be doing this. "Take it before I fucking change my mind."

He took it.

Dutton jammed her empty hand back into her—his— _her_  coat, backing away. "I took $15.42. It's a ten percent finders' fee, and I rounded up to the nearest cent. I am  _not_ giving it back."

"Oh. Okay. Thank you again for bringing it back. Uh…do you want any more—" He began to open the wallet.

_The fucking nerve--_

"I am not a goddamn charity case!" Her hands clenched into tight hard fists in their pockets, pressing against the suffocating wool. "You don't get to patronize me."

He snapped the wallet shut quickly, palms up towards Dutton in a placating gesture that made bile rise in her throat. "Look." She forced the words past her lips. "Thank you. I don't think I said it, last night, so—thank you. That was—you were decent. So I brought back your wallet." She swallowed. "And I took a percentage because I deserve that for my trouble, and because you need to learn not to be such a fucking idiot, because that 'whore with a heart of gold' business is complete bullshit. But I was  _not_  looking for a hand-out. I don't beg."

"I…didn't think you were." Her head jerked up, glaring, and he took a step back. "I swear."

"Good." She swallowed again. There was a rushing in her ears. "If I ever see you holding money out to me in that hand again, we better be a dark alley and you better be using your other hand to take off your pants."

She turned and left.

xxxxx

Almost a month later Dutton was huddled in the shelter of a bus stop working her way through the copy of  _The Mabinogi and Other Tales_ Goren had pressed on her. It was some seriously fucked up shit, shapeshifting and giants and sex and a lot of stuff about horses, for some reason. She was just beginning the adventures of Culhwch—if the Welsh loved anything more than horses, it seemed to be consonants—when she heard it.

"Dutton?"

She turned around and barely had time to hear the voice go "Dutton!" when she was swept up into a monstrous bear hug, her entire body lifted clear off the ground. Panic flared, and she twisted, struggling, drawing her knee back for maximum force and getting ready to slam it forward when she looked up and—

"Jesus fucking Christ, are you trying to give me a heart attack!?"

Bobby Goren beamed down at her. "You're alive!"

 _Oooookay._ "Um, yes. Yes, I am." He looked dazed, happy but stunned, literally, as though he'd just been hit very hard upside the head. "Could you put me down now?"

It seemed to take a second for her words to penetrate his brain, but then he blushed and set her down rapidly. "I'm just glad you're…you're okay. I was worried—why don't you have the coat?"

"I gave it away," Dutton said, brushing herself off. "This kid I was walking the track with, she—"

"It was for you."

_Jesus, controlling much?_

"She needed it more than me," Dutton said carefully. "She's a junkie, she gets shivers—"

"You gave that coat to a junkie?" His eyes narrowed and grew cold. For the first time since she had met him, he looked angry. "What, are you needle buddies? Did you trade it for some of her stash?" He grabbed her arm, shoving up the sleeve. "You had me  _worried_ —"

"Fuck you!" Dutton wrenched away. "You gave that coat to me, it was mine to do what I wanted with, and I gave it to her. I'm not your pet hooker!"

"I got called down to the morgue!"

The words hung in the air between them, heavy and solid and utterly surreal.

"What?"

"I…I got called down to the morgue." He'd backed away, hunching his shoulders and looking at the ground, as if trying to fold back into himself. As if trying to pull his words out of the air and back into himself. "I got a call saying they had a Jane Doe, dead from—from exposure, and my name was on a piece of tape in her coat pocket, you know, f—from the sandwiches—" he gestured at Dutton, still not looking at her. "So I got called down to I.D. the body and it wasn't you, but it was the coat, and I didn't know how she got the coat and whether or not you were okay, and I, I didn't see you around the neighborhood…"

"Vice's been cracking down, I've had to keep a lower profile," Dutton heard herself saying. "God, Lara…"

"She was…your friend?"

"She was a nice kid." Dutton closed her eyes. "Ran away from home. Her ex got her addicted, and she started hooking after he ditched her—I should've known what happened when she didn't show up, but I hoped—" She could hear the edge of a crack working its way into her voice, and she shook her head sharply, one, two, three. Opened her eyes. "But I'm sure you don't care, seeing as she was just a junkie."

"I—I didn't mean it like that—"

"Really."

"It's just—" he scrubbed his face with his hand. "I was projecting—my brother, he—he'll say anything, do anything, for a hit, he sponged off me for a long time, and I—I'm sorry." He turned to go.

"Wait!"

Dutton grabbed at his cuffs. "Not that it's any of your business, but—look." She pushed up her sleeves. "I'm clean."

He was giving her that Magic Eye Puzzle scrutiny again, and she was suddenly embarrassed. "I mean, it's not like I couldn't be smoking something instead of using needles, but I'm not. Not that it's any of—"

"My business," he finished. He tugged down her sleeves again. His fingers lingered for just a second on her wrist. "I trust you."

"You're an idiot," Dutton said, but without any fire. She stepped away, then hesitated. "You were really…concerned about me?"

"Yes."

She was not touched, dammit. "You don't even know me."

Bobby shrugged. "I don't know you less than I don't know most people, these days."

xxxxx

The next time, Dutton saw him first.

She was moonlighting at Connie's Dinner, swabbing down a table when he came in the door. He had to duck his head, and the wind blowing through the entryway set his coat flapping around his ankles.

And she was so ridiculously fucking happy to see him.

For Christ's sake, he was just some fucking crazy librarian who gave her a coat once. They weren't  _friends_.

They weren't even acquaintances, not really.

She watched him sit down, fuss with the placemat. He studied the menu briefly, flirted with the waitress.

She watched him pull out a thick orange paperback, and scoot around the booth while he read, trying to scrunch his gigantic frame into the small space but not willing to tear himself away from the page. He barely looked up to thank the waitress when she brought his meatball sandwich and coffee, and he ate with one hand holding the book open and just barely out of reach of the dripping bread.

He didn't move his lips, but his expressions twisted and twitched and morphed to match the story: surprise, mirth, hope, delight, despair, grief…it was like a facial rollercoaster.

Dutton watched all this, her hands moving robotically on the table beneath her—it would be cleanest table in Connie's Diner history—and then he twitched as if he were about to look up, and she snapped out of it and tore herself away, beating a hasty retreat out of his sight, not stopping till she reached the dumpster out back. She leaned against it, breathing heavily, picturing his face all soft and quiet and confused, and her hands shook with frustration and misery and fury.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goren: _(singing)_ Just lots of good will and maybe one small thrill, but ain't nothin' dirty going on!
> 
> Eames: Hey, Goren? Remember that time you deliberately cut your hand open?
> 
> Goren: Uh-huh.
> 
> Eames: The time you purposefully threw yourself off a building?
> 
> Goren: Um, yeah.
> 
> Eames: The time you went to bat for a serial killer who ate girls' leg muscles?
> 
> Goren: Yes…
> 
> Eames: When you got all up in Ross' face and smirked evilly and said, "I'm a killer?"
> 
> Goren: Still yes…
> 
> Eames: Well, you singing classic Broadway showtunes about hookers is more frightening than all of those things combined.
> 
> Goren: _(pouts)_

The next time Dutton saw Bobby Goren, it was early morning and she was getting fucked bent over a defective washing machine in the basement of Lennie's Kwik-n-Cheep Laundromat. In fact, she was getting fucked by Lennie Prospero himself, who seemingly had, based on her recent and frequent experience, named his business not only after himself but also his two most prominent personality traits.

Her face was pressed down into the cold metal at an uncomfortable angle so that all she could see was a slice of dirty cracked tile ceiling and most of the door to the stairs. Unlocked. It got him off.

Dutton thought a blurry photo of a woman's knee was probably enough to get Lennie off.

She bit her lip as he rammed in at an uncomfortable angle. Jesus fucking Christ, you'd think he was trying to drill through concrete. She hadn't moaned in awhile, so she went ahead and gave a low one, hoping it managed to sound more encouraging than sarcastic. His speed and the pressure on her head increased. Yep, he liked that.

Above her she could hear the whooshing and thumping of the clothes in the washers and dryers, the muted rise and fall of conversations and arguments—a booming laugh, a shrill interjection, a little girl's whine.

She tried to listen to those sounds, make up little stories—an infatuated man pretending a young woman had taken his T-shirt, a kid who loved cookies wanting to go home and watch _Dora the Explorer—_ so she wouldn't have to listen to the dull clanking of her knees knocking into the machine's front, Lennie Prospero's grunting and gasping as he pushed in, the rustle of his fingers in her hair as he neared his climax and pushed her head down harder, harder, harder—

So she could pretend she was up there, instead.

It would smell like detergent and Pine-Sol up there, and rain and mud and crayons and cheap Chinese food and gasoline, and the textbooks the college students tried to read while they waited, and someone's fresh-bought box of piping hot glazed donuts…

The basement stank of ammonia; rat piss and crumbling cement, rancid sweat and off-brand bleach.

_You are not here. You are not here. Nobody can hurt you because you are not—_

The door began to open.

Dutton tensed,  _oh shit shit shit shit shit please let it not be a cop,_ but Lennie was in the home stretch and oblivious to the world—a muscular arm clutching a piled-high hamper entered her view, froze, began to pull away—then froze again. Took a step forward, revealing a face.

Bobby Goren.

He stood there, just looking at her, dumbfounded. She met his gaze squarely, a silent challenge. Let him get his fill.

She was damned if she was going to be ashamed.

And then, almost as if he'd heard her thoughts, he gave her a quick nod and stepped back, the door shutting with a nearly noiseless click.

xxxxx

He was waiting for her afterwards in her space beneath the stairs, sitting cross-legged next to the pile of cardboard boxes that passed as insulation for her nest of blankets and old newspapers and as security for her suitcase of personal belongings.

Dutton leaned against the wall. "Well, aren't I the popular one this morning."

"I thought it was another laundry room down here…I didn't know, I wasn't—looking…" His face was turned away; she couldn't make out his expression. "You've kept it very…impersonal…here."

She raised an eyebrow.  _Ladies and gentlemen, Robert Goren: librarian, hooker aficionado, and interior decorator._ "Well, if I have to move out quickly I can't be running around peeling ABBA posters off the walls."

_And I'm not putting up Joe's picture when Lennie could come in here and fuck me any time he gets the itch._

Bobby turned his head slowly to look at her, brown eyes pained and disbelieving. " _This…_ this is what he makes you…give yourself for?"

She crossed her arms. "Have you tried living outside recently?"

"No," he said. Apparently librarians didn't get a lot of rhetorical questions.

"Well, trying it in winter makes this look like the fucking Hilton." She snorted mirthlessly. "My previous landlord kicked me out last week when he found out what I did. Offered me a lovely pamphlet on the power of Christ as he did it, though."

Bobby Goren dropped his gaze. Drew a quick little design in the dust of the floor with his fingers, then pulled them back, twisting them together. Fidgeted.

_You're never still, are you?_

_You always have to be doing…something._

_And right now you have no fucking idea what you're supposed to do._

"Besides," she said just to break the silence, "if I throw in a blow job, I get free laundry."

At first she didn't think he was going to respond. His hand snaked out again to twirl through the dust, then pulled back as if it had been slapped. He pressed his fingertips into the concrete, the pink below his fingernails fading to white. What was he still doing here?

And why the fuck had he waited here for her in the first place?

When he did speak, it was so quiet she almost missed it. "Do you…I mean, are you, that is—do you ever….did you finish the book?"

It was patently obvious that that was not the question he had started out intending to ask, but Dutton let it slide. " _Mabinogi_? Yeah. Not bad. I liked Rhiannon."

"Celtic heroines…they're some of the best."

Dutton smirked. "Coulda told you that myself."

"If you ever wanted…you could come by and get another book. And we could talk about it. And if it got late, you could just—not have to come back here."

She gave him a sharp look, but couldn't tell if he had intended for his words to be taken in quite the way they'd come out. "Well, maybe I will."

xxxxx

When she got back that night—technically morning—there was a new cardboard box.

At the very top of one side it said in large black letters: NOT CHARITY.

Towards the middle, in smaller letters, it said: very late birthday present.

And towards the bottom: or possibly very early.

It held fruit, a Hershey's bar (jackpot!), a loaf of crusty bread, pepper spray, a wool blanket, and several postcards of the Empire State Building that had been pre-stamped in what Dutton could not decide was thoughtfulness, condescension, or sheer Gorenosity.

And a coat.

xxxxx

The next time she saw him, she saved his life.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eames: I live in a laundromat? A _laundromat?_
> 
> Goren: A poorly spelled laundromat, at that.
> 
> Eames: Don't rub it in.
> 
> Goren: That's what she said—ow!
> 
> Eames: You were saying?
> 
> Goren: That I, um, completely sympathize with your unfortunate situation in which I can find absolutely no innuendo.
> 
> Eames: Good Angst-Boy. Have a donut.

Dutton did not walk into O'Flaherty's Grill and Bar that day intending to save Bobby Goren's life, metaphorically or literally.

By the end of the evening, she had done both.

xxxxx

She spotted his broad shoulders, filling out a deep blue suit, across the cigarette smoke-choked room as he wheeled a small suitcase up to a barstool and set a leather binder on the counter next to him. Dutton couldn't hear what he said over the din of the sports fans next to him, but the bartender brought him what looked like a scotch on the rocks.

Gavin's fingers fretted slightly on her knee, and she turned back to him.

"Do you want dessert?" he asked. His voice stayed level, but a little frantic light flickered in his eyes. The evening was drawing to its inevitable conclusion.

"They do a good chocolate cake here," she said, despite the fact that O'Flaherty's cake tasted like it had been made out of the cardboard box the cake mix came in. Still, even if the place wasn't exactly the Ritz, it was certainly a few dozen steps above the flophouses, rusty cars, and back alleys in which Dutton normally conducted her business. And she appreciated that enough to grant Gavin the reprieve.

Also, free food was free food, and she was getting paid by hour.

She made certain not to glance over at Bobby for the next fifteen minutes. Last fucking thing she needed was him seeing her, coming over and talking to her while she was with a client, making complications.

And Bobby probably wouldn't recognize her anyway. It was a dark room. And he had that luggage, he was probably just stopping off for a quick drink.

He'd probably just toss it down and slip out the door into the black-and-blue night, and never even know she'd been there.

So Dutton made small talk with her client and scraped every dry, crumbly trace of frosting from her plate. It stuck in her throat as she stroked Gavin's arm, kissed his cheek, called the waiter for another whiskey so he could blame it later, and she could already feel herself pulling out of her body, floating up, watching herself…

She turned to accept the waiter's refill, heard the whoosh of the shutting door and saw with a rush of disappointment and relief that Bobby's place at the bar was empty.

…or not.

Lying alone, and askew, and dangerously close to a pool of condensation on the stained and the scarred wood, was Bobby Goren's binder.

xxxxx

"Goren!" It had rained earlier, and her heels skidded slightly on the wet concrete. "Jesus fucking Christ, slow down!"

"Dutton?" He turned around. "What are you—"

"Forget something?" She dangled the binder in front of him.

He blushed. "Oh—um, yeah. That could've been important once I got to Boston."

"Going to use it to club the locals?"

"Uh, librarians' conference. I'm supposed to present on 'Race and Class in Agatha Christie' and 'Reimagining Melville.'

Dutton smirked. "Fascinating."

"You're a, a lifesaver."

Dutton rolled her eyes, handing it to him. "Well, I suppose that's a step up from 'commercial sex worker'—what?"

His eyes had widened as she stepped towards him to give him the binder, and then his face had twisted, heartbreak and ice-hot fury wrestling across his features. He reached towards her face and she almost flinched, his fingers hesitating a few inches from her eye…oh. The bruising.

Shit.

_Well, I guess I won't be taking up cosmetology anytime soon._

"Bad date," she said shortly.

"Bad…" His hand still hovering in mid-air.

She crossed her arms. "It happens. I have to get back to my client. See you later."

"Wait—is—now, are you—" he gestured towards the bar, his words choking in his throat. "The guy you're with now—was it—"

"'Not any of your business' is becoming our refrain. We should trademark it; we'd make a mint."

He punched the wall.

"Fuck! Goren!" She grabbed his arm. "Jesus. Fuck. Fine, okay, it wasn't Gavin, okay? Gavin's spent this entire evening forcing himself to slide his hand further up my leg."

For a second she didn't think he believed her, but then he nodded and sat down, right there on the sidewalk, leaning against the storefront. He closed his eyes, his breaths evening.

She stood watching him for awhile, then glanced up the deserted street, shook her head, and slid down next to him.

xxxxx

"Should you…should you be getting back to him?" Bobby asked a few minutes later, breaking the silence.

"He'll live without fucking me for awhile yet. How's your hand?"

"Fine."

"Bullshit."

"No, really. It's, it's just drywall here." He waved above their heads. "Construction, or something. I guess. I just…I—you can go. I'll be fine."

"The two hundred pounds of insane librarian still slumped on the pavement tell me different."

He stiffened. "I'm not insane."

"Tell that to the drywall."

They were quiet for a bit longer, until Bobby said, with absolutely no segue of any kind, "'Force himself?' Why would he have to—" A lightbulb went on over his head. "He's gay. Your john tonight's gay."

"Trying not to be."

"How's that going for him?"

Dutton gave a harsh laugh. "Not well."

"You feel…sorry for him."

"Yeah." She looked up at the sky. Smog. No stars. A distant light that was probably a plane, little kids sipping apple juice and teenagers on iPods and middle-aged professionals skimming Times and shaking their heads. Starting over somewhere else, or coming home. "He's so terrified of what he is that he forces himself to cheat on his wife with a bargain-basement whore just so he can tell himself he's a real man, and then he just hates himself more. He's trapped."

"Everybody's trapped," Bobby said softly to the night sky.

Her eyes stung, and she nodded, following his gaze upwards to the maze of flashing lights in darkness that was New York City at midnight.

Which was why she didn't see the three approaching men until it was too late.

xxxxx

They were rangy, whippet-like, all leers and ragged windbreakers. Two were unarmed as far as she could see, but the third was gripping a switchblade. They were all smiling. But hard smiles.

"Hey, sweethearts," the shortest one, not the one with the knife, said as Bobby and Dutton stood up. "Lil' early for a nap, isn't it?"

Bobby opened his mouth, and Dutton knew, just  _knew,_ he was going to say something incredibly stupid like 'But we weren't napping' or 'Why don't you gentlemen just be on your way' and so she elbowed him hard in the gut and— _float away float away you are not here nobody can hurt you because—_ smiled ingratiatingly at the speaker. "You wouldn't scare off a working girl's best client, would you? Not when we could…work something out."

Chuckles, low and dirty. "And that would be…?"

She stepped towards him slowly—no sense in freaking out his friend with the knife—and pressed herself against him.  _You are not here not here not here._  "Whatever you boys want."

He yanked back her hair, groped her breasts. "Not bad, honey."

"No…" Bobby was wheezing, hands on his knees. "Dutton, don't—"

"Bobby,  _shut up_." If she got fucking killed because this fucking idiot could not get off his goddamn pure white charger for one fucking second—

"Loverboy going to have a problem?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Not unless he's your type."

A rasping laugh, breath like nicotine gum and tooth decay against her face. "Scram," he told Bobby, pulling Dutton into the alleyway, buddies close behind as he hiked up her dress _notherenotherenot_ —

THUD.

Bobby had not scrammed. Bobby had chosen instead to bodyslam her…current engagement…to the ground.

Everything froze, and then everything happened incredibly fast:

The second unarmed man struck out at Dutton in confusion, and—snap! like a splintering branch—she broke his wrist.

The first tried to rise, and Bobby slammed him back into the concrete.

The one with the knife said "Fucker!" in an oddly high-pitched voice and plunged the blade down towards Bobby's back.

And Dutton threw herself between them, felt the metal slice hot like burning screaming into her arm, and kneed the son of a bitch as hard as she could.

xxxxx

"Dutton, what—"

She waved Gavin aside, grimacing in pain as she gripped the makeshift bandage—three inches off the bottom of her dress—around her arm, not particularly caring if she dripped blood on the floor. "Coupla punks held us up; 'Miss Marian, Madame Librarian' here—" she gestured at Bobby, hobbling through the door after her— "tried to play hero. Going to have to take a rain check tonight."

"Of, of course…" he fished in his wallet. "Here…for your trouble--" He hurried away.

"Pleasure doing business with you," she called after his retreating back. "Damn. Now I probably  _have_ scared off my biggest client—what the hell do you think you're doing?"

Bobby jumped, looking up from his cellphone. "Uh…calling the police?"

"Are you always a complete fucking moron, or do I just bring out the best in you?" she asked through gritted teeth. "If you want to call them in half an hour, fine, but give me a few fucking minutes to get the hell out of Dodge before you give them evidence they can use to arrest me for soliciting,  _again."_

Bobby looked chagrined. "Oh, I, I didn't think—I'm sorry. We need…we need to get you to a hospital…St. Agnes is closest—

_(Cherry and mahogany and red leather and a Harvard diploma on the wall, not like Joe's room with the antiseptic greens and blues._

" _I can't afford—"_

" _Pro bono arrangements are very rare, but I could be…persuaded…")_

"Not a chance."

"Fitzgerald, then—"

"Didn't you ever learn that no means no?"

He tilted his head at her. "You're…afraid of hospitals?"

( _"I could be…persuaded…")_

"Yes, terrified," she snapped sarcastically. "It all stems from my traumatic experience of having to watch  _Grey's Anatomy._ I'm going home."

"You need to have a doctor look at that—"

She shook her head dismissively. "It's a surface wound; fucker couldn't even hold a knife straight. No nerve or muscle damage, and it missed the cephalic vein and the radial collateral artery—what?" He was gawking at her. "I  _do_  know things besides how to spread my legs, you know."

"I—I know, I just wasn't expecting you to know…that." He set his jaw in a firm line, and she could tell he was digging his heels in. "You can't go back to the laundromat. Even if it's not that serious, you've already lost blood, and it'll be too cold there at night, you'll, you'll go into shock—"

"I'm  _not_ —"

"Going to a hospital, fine! Come home with me."

The ache in her arm stabbed deeper. "I'm not really up to work right now."

"I, I wasn't asking you to—"

"I earn my keep."

"You saved my life," he said, softly, earnestly. Practically auditioning for a Hallmark card. "You won't owe me anything. I owe  _you_ —giving you a place to stay won't even start to repay that."

He had a point. She could feel herself wavering, and tried to hide it. "Your conference…?"

"I can drive down instead of flying. The first couple of days are just schmoozing and showing off anyway."

He was looking at her so worried and hang-dog and hopeful, and his place  _would_  be warm, and…

"Alright. But we're stopping to get my things first."

xxxxx

"Does your library know you've opened a competing branch?" Dutton set down her suitcase—she had refused to let Bobby carry it—and surveyed the stacks upon stacks of books, some shelved neatly in bookcases but others piled in haphazard towers across the apartment.  _How to Write About Art. The Appeal. Where the Wild Things Are. A Chorus of Stones. Heart of Darkness._

Bobby smiled slightly. "I'll just get the bandages."

He darted out of the room, and Dutton could hear him rooting about in a cupboard, banging and rustling and clinking. She wandered aimlessly about, tapping her fingers lightly on the book covers.

_The Things They Carried. The Phantom Tollbooth. Harry Potter y La Piedra Filosofal._

_The Unbearable Heart._

There was a framed picture set atop that last one: an attractive blonde woman with big brown eyes and a low-cut top. She was laughing at the camera, trying to fend it off with a copy of  _Billy Budd_.

"Nicki," Bobby said from behind her.

Dutton jumped. "Fucking hell, Goren, you walk like a goddamn mouse when you want to."

"Ah, but I dance like a moose."

She snorted, and began to unwind the dress fabric from her arm. "So. Your girlfriend?"

"No. Not exac—no." He helped her tease out a particularly difficult knot, and the rest of it came away, the cut no longer bleeding. "We—we worked together, and we were close."

"Fuckbuddies?"

"It wasn't like that!" he snapped, and Dutton found herself mirroring the placating gesture he had made before, hands up in the air, palms out.

"Okay, okay, relax."

He looked like he wanted to say something more, but then he took her hand and squirted some disinfectant on a rag. "This could sting."

"Okay."

He dabbed at her wound in silence for awhile. Then, "Nicki…wasn't good at—at relationships. She—her childhood was horrible, and she could just never…trust anybody enough to, to really—let them in. And when her relationships failed, she came to me, because I understood that, and…we comforted each other."

Dutton waited a moment, trying to gauge his mood. "Past tense…she left?"

Bobby gave a shaky laugh. "Yeah." He put away the disinfectant, unscrewed the cap of the antibiotics. The cream was ice-cold as he spread it across her skin. "She…died."

"Oh, shit."  _("You don't have the funds to give him a proper funeral…unless…")_  "Damn. Fuck, Bobby, I'm sorry. I am."

He began to wrap her arm in gauze, not looking at her face. "She struggled…every day, even when she was happy, it was like a battle for her, and I guess she just…got tired of fighting."

"She killed herself." It wasn't a question.

Bobby let out a trembling breath. "Last November."

And there was really nothing Dutton could say to that, so she leaned into him a little more as he finished dressing her wound, trying to let that say what no one could make words for.

He examined his handiwork carefully. "That should be alright."

"It's great," she told him, hating how fake-bright her voice sounded in the aftermath of what had been said. "You have a secret life as an EMT or something?"

He stiffened. "I was…very clumsy as a child."

"Didn't your mom put on your Band-Aids for you? Kiss it and make it better?"

He pulled away, his eyes shuttered. "She was very clumsy too." He walked quickly to a closet, and began pulling out blankets. "I'll, I'll get the couch ready."

"Sure you don't want me on the floor?" Dutton didn't know why it was suddenly so important to make him blush, or smile, or  _something_  not made of death and darkness, but fuck it all, it was. Unfortunately, the double entendre slid right off Bobby's back, so she switched tacks. "I might give your couch hooker cooties."

He twisted around, startled and—yes, she could see it, a twitching at the right side of his mouth—amused. "I think I'll chance it."

"Brave soul."

"Not really." He shrugged. "I can smell your shampoo, and your soap. I know you're clean."

"You can smell my…"

"Shampoo and soap."

She gaped at him. "I use the plain Walgreens brand. It's unscented."

Bobby rolled his eyes, and it made him look so suddenly like a nine-year-old on human growth hormone that Dutton had to stifle a mad giggle. "Nothing's unscented."

She rolled her eyes back at him and plopped down on the couch next to where he was setting the blankets. And as he bent forward to fluff the pillow the collar of his suit gapped open and she saw, at the back of his neck, a faint crescent shaped scar.

Without thinking she reached out to trace it, and he froze.

"Clumsy?" she asked softly.

The spell broke, and he scrambled away. "I, I should get some sleep if I'm going to drive tomorrow—you can use the shower in the morning if you want—" He was looking anywhere but at her again. "Ibuprofen's in the second cupboard from the left. Goodnight. Knock if you need anything." He hurried down the hall, the bedroom door shutting with a firm click.

"Goodnight," Dutton told the empty air where he had been standing.

xxxxx

In the middle of the night, Dutton jerked awake. For a second she panicked, not recognizing her surroundings, before she remembered the circumstances that had brought her here.

And then she heard the breathing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eames: Breathing? What breathing?
> 
> Goren: Maybe a serial killer broke in.
> 
> Eames: Really? Because that would be incredibly melodramatic.
> 
> Goren: Did you watch the sixth and seventh seasons?
> 
> Eames: Point taken. Or maybe you just have a dog or something.
> 
> Goren: That would be really anticlimactic.
> 
> Eames: Did you even wake up for the eighth season?
> 
> Goren: …not really.
> 
> Eames: Can't blame you.

Stupid.

She had been so fucking stupid.

In…out. Innn…out.

Deep, heavy—four feet away?—maybe less… Dutton swallowed against the bile rising in her throat, the crushing weight of his gaze on her back, icy phantom fingers pressing against her spine, shit shit  _shit_ —

Could he tell she was awake? Would that matter to him? Would he--

 _You're a lifesaver_  and--

 _Everybody's trapped_  and—

 _She…died_ , and looking at her all little-lost-puppy-like and acting upset about her black eye (reaching towards it but not touching, like that would make it real and that would kill him) and  _you won't owe me anything_ and she'd fucking bought it hook-line-sinker, followed him back here letting him lead her like a dumb dog and she was going to be sick now thinking of (a smile and  _I think I'll chance it_ ) the way his fingers had skimmed over the skin of her arm—

In…out.

Acting like he understood—

Her face was pressed into the pillow, eyes still shut, and Dutton could taste what was going to happen in the air, choking on the damp wool smell of the coat ( _NOT CHARITY)_ she had wrapped herself in before pulling the blanket over herself ( _very late birthday present—_ for him to unwrap now, ha ha fucking ha) suffocating in the scent of wool and antibiotics and book paste and HIM and what the hell was he waiting for ( _or possibly very early)_  didn't he know  _fair game fair game asking for it what does she expect what she does for a living (_ and the ghost of the mugger's knife stabbed her arm deep and)  _fucking whore fair game stop wasting police time fair game bitch asking for it_

Innnnn…

(Come on you sick fucking bastard, just get this over with, come on)

Out…

"Just do it."

She hadn't known she was going to say that. Well. It was said. She clenched her jaw, pressed her fists against her thighs. Waited for the pawing. Or the blows.

"What?" His voice was soft. Close enough to pin her in one move if she tried to run, two or three if she surprised him. And then there was the suitcase and everything inside…

"Whatever you're going to do. I hate waiting, so just—" She stopped, drew in a long breath. She would not say 'please.' She would not beg for this. "Go ahead."

"I…don't understand."

 _Still playing the altar boy_.

"There's a limited number of reasons guys stand over me while I'm sleeping." Her voice was unreal in the dark beyond her eyelids. She opened her eyes and stared at the criss-crossing threads in his couch, blue-black in the grey living room night. Too real. "You can do whatever you want. I promise I won't struggle, un—unless you like that."

A jagged, sucking-in breath. "I wasn't…I was just checking—"

"I can pretend to be asleep," she interrupted, and what the hell was she thinking interrupting but God she just wanted this to start so she could float away outside of herself and not stay caughtstucktrapped (can't breathe) in the knots of his coat and his blanket and his eyes. "If that's what turns you on. Fine, okay."

 _One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand,_ and the floorboards beneath the carpet shuddered, rubbing together with a paper-thin squeal. The flicker of his shadow plunged over her and the back of the couch and her nails bit into her palm.  _Not here not here I am not here_ and he moved past her, his footsteps turning harder, harsher as they met the kitchen linoleum and she waited, her body a violin string tightened to breaking.

Click. And light bloomed in the kitchen, its halo touching the blankets over Dutton's clenched hands.

Rattling, clinking, clank! Getting a glass. Confirmed when she heard the lonely shriek of the old plumbing and the gurgle of the water slopping out.

Pad, pad, thud, pad. On the other side of the room now. He was taking so goddamn long to get the props for whatever fucking game he'd decided to play and her throat was closing up and she wanted to fucking stab him in the throat, she wanted him  _dead_ —

Thunk thud thunk friiiiip, thud, thunk, friiiiiip! Books. The fucker was actually picking out…books.

She was going to laugh, she really was, and that was such a bad idea right now and it hurt when she swallowed and her heart was a drum being pounded over and over and over again—

And thwapthwapthwap as he stacked them in his arms (solid slapping sounds, thick hardbacks) and came back (please let this not hurt), and then, still soft (like silk cords around her neck), "Get up."

She slid out of the coat. Stood.

Met his eyes.

He flinched slightly, his left foot bouncing back a half-inch and his chin almost ducking down before he caught himself, and then there was a moment, silent, where they both waited for the other to move. Then he turned and walked down the hall.

Lead in her stomach, she followed. The floor did not exist beneath her feet and she made her legs move forward, stiff and wooden but unshaking.

He didn't stop at the open door to his bedroom, but the one between it and the bathroom, balancing his cup on the four books in his arms as he opened it. A walk-in closet.

He did that head-duck neck-rub thing again and said, "This is, uh, the only room in here that locks from the outside."

The words struck Dutton, a bolt of white lightning.

_(can't move in the trunk with the rag soaked (choking) with engine grease stuffed in her mouth, tang of blood and molding upholstery clogging her nose, caughtstucktrapped and_

"No. No, no, no no no." She backed away, pressing her shoulders against the wall and she was shaking her head and she could feel each dip and dimple in the plaster behind the wallpaper and she could still  _feel_  the biting strands of twine cutting into her wrists—"I won't. I'll do whatever you want, I'll make it good for you, just—let me go. Don't shut me—" her voice was outside of herself ( _runrunruncan'tlegsfrozenthesuitcase you'regoingtodieruncan'tohgodneedaweaponrun)_  herfeet rooted to the floorand she ground out the word that wasn't going to make any difference but oh fuck she wanted to live _\--_ "Please."

"Dutton--I…" He was hunched down and back like he was trying to make himself look smaller, like anything could possibly make him look smaller, and his words were tripping over themselves, "I'm so sorry, I wasn't saying, I didn't mean , I meant—" and he backed away, into the closet, to the farthest wall—"me. I meant me, for you to—so you could sleep, for you to shut me in… _Dutton_ …" He sat, cross-legged, and set down the books and water, not looking away from her, homing beacon eyes. He took a deep breath. "I couldn't sleep. I thought…maybe you couldn't either. I was just going to check, and maybe get some, some pie from the fridge, and then you woke up—I am so sorry…"

She took a step forward, gripped the edge of the door with her left hand. "This is a trick."

"No trick."

Dutton gripped the door harder to keep her hand steady and not trembling as she examined the lock for a way he could jimmy it loose from inside, the muscles of her legs tensed to flee. Her blood was still shrieking through her veins at a million miles an hour. There was a ringing in her ears. "What's to stop you from turning the tables when I let you out?"

"You could ask one of my neighbors to do it instead."

The laugh jerked out of her throat without her permission, shaky and sour. "You do this often?"

He shrunk back even further, somehow. Opened his mouth and then shut it again.

"Fine." She slammed the door shut, locked it, and backed away.

Nothing happened.

She took a slow, shaky breath that rattled through her whole ribcage, and then another, and another, and then Dutton stumbled back against the wall again and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor with her fingers digging into the carpet to hang on because otherwise she was going to sink right through it and keep on going until she was swallowed up and disappeared forever.

She might have laughed, a few times. It was a sound she could make that wasn't crying.

When she could, Dutton got up and went back to the living room.

She couldn't lie back down on the couch.

(She could leave him in there.)

When she realized she was just standing there staring at the shape made by the crumpled coat and blankets on the couch cushions, Dutton shook herself and walked to the kitchen. There was a pie in the fridge. Cherry. She hacked out a slice and stabbed into it with her fork. The first few bites slithered and slimed down her throat and she almost gagged, but then her tastebuds woke back up (and here came back the feeling in her legs too) and it was tart and sweet with a flaky crust and suddenly she was  _starving._

(She could leave him in there and no one would ever know.)

Dutton scraped the plate clean, washed it on autopilot and then wandered through the stacks of books. She opened one but the marks on the paper refused to become words.

He had let her just lock him in there.

(She could leave right now.)

"He's insane," she said out loud, and snapped the book shut.

She went back into the living room, and found she could lie down on the couch again.

She couldn't sleep.

It had to be a trick. Some twisted gambit, just to fuck with her, the way her mind and her stomach were swirling and churning and tying themselves in knots trying to line up everything she knew with everything that happened, a gamble that she'd trust him enough to let him out or maybe he just had a way to get out on his own and either way she should leave, she should leave right now, fuck, she should already be gone, but

_I couldn't sleep. I thought…maybe you couldn't either._

Full of shit.

But.

The way his fingers had twisted in the dust on the basement floor of Lennie's Kwik-n-Cheep Laundromat.

_This…this is what he makes you…give yourself for?_

But…

But it made no  _sense_.

Dutton threw off the blankets. This did not happen, people did not do these things. It did not  _work_  like this.

She made up her mind.

She had to know.

Whatever this was, whatever he was, she  _had_  to know, the need a piercing ache within her gut.

But she wasn't stupid, so she went to the kitchen and got a knife first.

xxxxx

Dutton unlocked the door to the closet and held out a blanket and a pillow, her arms rigid. "Thought you might want these."

"Thank you." Bobby Goren was sitting almost exactly as she had left him, like a particularly maddening Spot the Six Differences picture with the only obvious change being that _Middlemarch_ had replaced  _John Crow's Devil._ He glanced back down at the book. "You can leave them by the door…I'll, I'll get them after you lock it again."

"You can stop treating me like a five-year-old," she snapped, clenching her jaw against the fear that wanted to slither up her spine again. The hidden handle of the knife pressed firmly against her arm. "I don't need kid gloves."

He looked at her with those helpless brown eyes, the fingers of his left hand twisting at the page corner of his book. "I don't know what…t-to do."

"Why do you have to do anything?" Her voice scraped against the walls of her throat and came out rawer than Dutton had intended, but she plowed on. "Who asked you to do anything for me? You throw things at me like a book or a coat is going to somehow fix anything, and then you wring your hands like it's some fucking tragedy when it doesn't." She stalked towards him, stopping less than a foot from his form. "Why are you acting nice to me?"

"Because you're the bravest person I know."

He was looking up at her as if she had just punched a lion in the face, and it made her want to kick him.

"You never back down," he murmured.

"Bravery isn't worth shit down a back alley with a coked-up john who's decided he didn't get his money's worth last time." A wave equal parts disgust and weariness swept through her, and she let the pillow and blanket drop and sat down in front of him, head in hands and rubbing at her temples where the first pangs of a headache were flaring. "I back down every fucking day."

"You hate it."

She snorted. "No one states the obvious quite like you."

He fiddled with a loose thread in the carpet. "I still think you're brave."

"Thirty bucks'll get you into my pants a lot quicker than charm."

"I mean it." She could feel his eyes on her, but when she didn't return his gaze he went back to  _Middlemarch_. Flipped a page. Then, to the book, "My mother wasn't clumsy."

"What?"

"B-before…when your arm--I said she was clumsy. She wasn't."

"No shit."

"She…she was schizophrenic." He swallowed noisily, and Dutton saw his right hand fist against the carpet before smoothing out again. "I took care of her."

"She cut you?"

"No!" His head shot up from the book, and then back down again as though he had broken a rule. "She never—she just—I took care of her. And myself. "

He flipped another page that Dutton was pretty sure he hadn't read. His shoulders were tight.

_A wet sidewalk and smoggy sky: "Everybody's trapped…"_

She said the only thing she could:

"My name's not Dutton."

He didn't reply, but his head lifted an inch.

"It was my husband's last name. I never actually took it when we were married." Deep breath. Let it out slowly. "He was coming home, right past a bust. Caught some cop's stray bullet." She blinked hard against the prickling behind her eyes. "I use 'Dutton' now to remind me why I—to remind me of a lot of things. And because—I miss him."

_(his skin is cold and growing colder still beneath her fingertips in the drab and lifeless room, and her betrayal is sticky on her thighs)_

"But mostly I use it because they don't deserve to use my real name. The johns or the cops. Whatever else they take—it's mine."

She looked up at Bobby. He had completely abandoned his book.

"You can call me Eames."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eames: What? She was supposed to update MVAD next!
> 
> Goren: …you wanted to read that?
> 
> Eames: No, but I'd like to read _something_ where I'm not a hooker.
> 
> Goren: Well, think of this way: would you rather read about yourself as a prostitute, or as a cop being viciously and gratuitously tortured with poor odds of survival?
> 
> Eames: Oh, the cornucopia of choices available to me.

She was packing up and he was almost out the door when he handed her the keys.

They glinted silver, and held the heat from his hands.

"What's this for?"

"The apartment."

The corner of her mouth twitched up, but she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "I figured that. I meant—"

They were a small but alarmingly real weight in her palm, and she ran her fingertips over the engraved numbers to test if they were really there.

\--" _why_."

He shrugged.

"I'll push them under the door after I leave."

"You could…keep them. Just in case."

The smooth face and sharp edges of the keys against her skin, and the way he was stooping just slightly down closer to her height, tore a little at something inside that she had to press down. "How do you know I won't bring johns up here to screw?"

He looked at her, into her eyes and all of her. "You won't."

Eames' hand clenched reflexively, metal teeth biting down. "You don't know that."

He tilted his head. His hair was still wet from the shower. "I'll…see you around?"

"Stranger things have happened."

He left.

She didn't.

xxxxx

Dutton was on her lunch break at Connie's, dumping about half the sugar from the dispenser into her coffee, when Detective Monique Jeffries walked in.

"Is this seat taken?"

"Depends." Dutton set down the sugar, eyeing the other woman warily.  _Badge clipped to her belt, but mostly covered by her jacket. No gun holster. Handcuffs nowhere to be seen. So, on duty but trying not to look threatening_. "Are you about to arrest me on a trumped-up charge?"

"Depends. How bad is the coffee?"

"Better than the swill you brew down at the station."

Jeffries slid into the seat opposite her. "Dutton, you break my heart."

xxxxx

The door to the apartment had a deadbolt, which was solid and reassuring when she closed the door behind her each night.

The pipes shrieked and moaned when she turned on the shower to scrub the work away, scalding water that turned ice cold after fifteen minutes, faded blue tile walls and the smell of her soap (unscented) and the rising, rising steam.

There were traces of Bobby Goren everywhere. The residue of his cologne on the hand towels. A chocolate fingerprint on the spine of  _The Scarlet Letter._ A half-finished crossword on the end table.

The couch was broken to the contours of his body, dips and lumps that were surprisingly easy to sleep around.

Anything she wasn't using she put back in her suitcase. No sense in making herself comfortable.

xxxxx

Jeffries might've been more decent than most cops, but she was still a cop. A bird of prey. Watching and waiting, hawk-eyed, for something to slip.

"What can I do for you today, Detective?" She kept her voice cool, disinterested. Nothing for Jeffries to pounce on, sink her talons into.

Jeffries leaned back against the red faux-leather booth. "Haven't seen you around your old haunts lately."

A shrug. "Got a new route. If I make your job easy, it just takes away all the fun."

"There's an angry laundromat owner looking for you." Sharp hawk nose, piercing hawk stare. The nonthreatening look didn't work too well on her. "Claims the two of you had an agreement. Oddly, he clammed up when we asked for details."

"I've found better accommodations." She took a long drink of coffee, not backing down from the detective's gaze. "Lennie'll just have to go back to contenting himself with the spin cycle."

The right corner of Jeffries' mouth twitched. "I do not even want to know how that would work."

"The lint traps would probably be a more practical choice." Dutton set down her mug. "Did you just look me up for girl talk, or are you going to get to the point?"

xxxxx

She made herself go back into the closet.

Bobby's suits hung from the sides, a blue and black jungle. Flattened cloth bodies, missing heads and feet. Off-white walls. That were not closing in on her. They weren't.

She lay on the carpet, bristle-rough against her back. Stared up at two lights, one blinking like a UFO until it burnt out, the glow dying away.

_One one-thousand, two one-thousand…._

His ties were mostly blue. Blue diamonds. Stripes. Tesseracts.

She made herself close the door. Slowly at first, then fast so she couldn't change her mind. At the last second she realized what was coming and she flinched, could've prepared herself if she'd realized what was coming but—

CLICK.

_(and everything in the trunk is darkness)_

The door's metal tongue sliding into the slot in the frame.

Not locked. She knew that. Even before she made certain, wrenching the door open and then closing-shutting-closing-shutting she knew that, but that red flash of panic behind her eyes made--

_(CLICK again and the world is made of blinding light)_

She closed the door.

Walked back to the center of the room.

_One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand…_

Sat and waited until she wasn't afraid.

… _seven hundred one-thousand, seven hundred and one one-thousand…_

xxxxx

Detective Jeffries studied Dutton for a few long moments. "What do you know about Lee Clary's New Years parties?"

Dutton felt her pulse spike, but she kept her hands and voice steady. "Sounds like they could take place in winter."

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

A pause. Then Jeffries glanced, too casually, around the diner. "Anyone else here know you're a pro?"

Dutton resisted the urge to whip her head around and make sure no one had overheard. "I figure it can't violate the health code more than anything else around here."

"How do you think the manager would feel, knowing what your second job is?"

Her fingers tightened on the mug's handle, but she kept her voice level. "I don't know. Nobody's been enough of an asshole to try and find out."

Jeffries switched tacks . "You counting on a big payoff next January? Is that why you won't tell me?"

"I haven't been that desperate in a long time."

"But you were. You know what goes on. I'm—" Her voice had begun to rise in volume, and after a deep breath, she lowered it. "I'm trying to stop more girls from getting hurt."

If it was a bluff, it was a good one. Still, couldn't let cops start thinking they could get something for free. "I tell you this, you don't bother me here again."

"Promise."

_Don't think I'll hold my breath on that one._

"They used to operate out of a barbershop basement; Barry's, Barney's, something like that. There's a big painting of an eagle and an American flag on the front window."

"You know where?"

She shook her head. "We were blindfolded on the ride over. Trip took about twenty minutes from St. Mark's."

"Thanks." Jeffries stood. "I take it there's no chance I could get you to testify."

Dutton gave a tight smile. "And people say cops can't learn."

xxxxx

Eames was just out of the shower, sitting on the couch leafing through a  _People,_ when Bobby came through the door. He stopped short at the sight of her. "…hello."

She glanced up. "Hello."

Goren let go of his suitcase's handle carefully, as if unsure he had entered the right apartment. "Don't take this the wrong way, but…what are you doing here?"

Eames looked back down at the magazine, trying not to tense her shoulders. "I read a couple of your books, but I put them back where I found them," she said. "I used my own stuff in the shower. Didn't take anything except some fruit that was about to go bad, and I left some money in the fridge for that." She flipped a page. Took a breath. "I decided saving your life was worth more than one night."

"Yeah?"

"Yep." She looked back up at him. "You're worth at least a week."

A smile. "At least."

"Mm-hmm."

"Ah." He picked took the handle of his suitcase and began to wheel it towards his room, before whirling around suddenly, alarmed. "You didn't—you didn't go in—"

"What? Fuck no. Jesus, give me some credit."

He had the grace to look embarrassed. "It's just—it's private, and—sorry." He beat a hasty retreat.

She was on the last page by the time he re-emerged into the living room, slinking onto the opposite end of the couch like she might object, and sneaking wide-eyed wondering looks at her when he thought she couldn't see.

"Are you okay?" he asked softly.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

He twisted his hands together. "I didn't think you'd want to use the key, unless…you really needed to."

A fist clenched inside her chest. "Do you want me to go?"

"What? No!"

"I can, if you want. I'm packed. There're shelters that'll take me for the night, and I can find a new place tomorrow. You don't have to feel guilty."

"I'm not," he insisted. "I just want to make sure you're not running from…anything dangerous, or--"

"Relax, I didn't track the Mob in on my shoes."

He tilted his head at her. "You're…not going to help explain this to me, are you?"

"Perceptive."

"Will you…ever explain it to me? Sometime?"

"Maybe."

A long silence.

"Okay."

He tucked his legs beneath him and picked up a  _Smithsonian,_ and they sat there together silently, reading, until Dutton had to go to work.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goren: Huh.
> 
> Eames: What?
> 
> Goren: That last chapter didn't end with a cliffhanger.
> 
> Eames: Hmm, you're right. Things actually seemed to be going moderately well for us.
> 
> _A long, contemplative pause._
> 
> Both: Oh shit.

Bobby was an early riser, and after a few mornings of him tiptoeing around her, Eames started getting up fifteen minutes earlier than him and walking down to the coffee shop for a toasted bagel and brew. The novelty of a live-in hooker would wear off soon enough—no need to hasten it along by making him change his life around her.

She would read one of the newspapers left behind on the tables, and by the time she let herself back into his apartment, he'd be washing his mug and throwing a few last-minute items into his briefcase. A 'good morning' smile, an offer to turn off the television—he'd had the news on once, but that was the only time he'd veered from the Discovery Channel—and then he'd be gone.

The first morning that he saw bruises on her arms Eames thought he was going to punch a wall again. But he looked away quickly, and when he spoke it was in a short, clipped tone. _You know where the ibuprofen is if you need any._

Once he was out the door, she'd go back to sleep for two or three hours.

Around nine-thirty she'd get up and dress in her waitress uniform, then walk the ten blocks to Connie's, her 'second-shift' clothes stuffed into the bottom of her purse.

So far Jeffries had stuck to her side of the deal, in letter if not in spirit—every other vice cop seemed to have taken Connie's as their personal clubhouse. The managers didn't help any, fawning over the officers with free coffee and extra helpings of strudel.

Eames knew she couldn't afford to lose this job.

Dutton spat in their sandwiches anyway.

The look on Bobby's face had been priceless the first time he'd seen her there, as startled and confused as if his waitress had been a triceratops. But then this sort of glow had come over his face and he'd asked softly, wonderingly, "Are you…getting out…?"

Something inside her twanged, and she snapped back, "I've worked here for five years."

Watching his face fall wasn't nearly as satisfying as it should've been.

Lunch and dinner breaks were coffee loaded with as much sugar as she could pour in without the new manager, Wanda, giving her the stink eye. She snuck packets of Saltines into her pockets when she bussed tables, which she could snack on later with filched jam packets.

Every once in awhile some jerkass customer would send back a meal, and if nobody else wanted it—the pickled tuna on rye was the most common culprit, especially when the customer'd asked for extra mayo—Dutton got to take that too.

After her shift ended, Dutton walked five blocks to a gas station to change into her other clothes. The attendant had been told a few times to threaten her with the police when she came around, but he preferred a half-price fuck in the station's bathroom.

The nights went how nights had always gone.

She got home at different times depending on how good business had been. Bobby always left the end-table lamp on. Sometimes beside it would be a Tupperware whose accompanying note insisted that he had made too much bouillabaisse for just himself, or burnt some of the cookies he'd intended for the children's Storytime Circle, or ordered something from China Express that he hadn't realized would have so much broccoli. She'd roll her eyes and eat, sorting her take for the night into budget piles—food, toiletries, debt, protection, emergency stash—before washing the container and printing 'Thank you' at the end of Bobby's note.

By that point Dutton'd be dead on her feet, but she always hauled herself and her shower things to the bathroom. She'd turn the water as hot as it could go and let it scorch her for a few minutes before scrubbing and scouring away the night's evidence. She didn't get out until the water turned icy on her raw skin.

Eames would get dressed in a baggy T-shirt and a pair of sweats. Throw the night's clothes in the washer with more detergent than necessary. Take her blankets out of the suitcase, put the shampoo, soap, and detergent back in. Flop onto the couch and fall asleep.

Bobby Goren had offered her part of the hall closet to store her belongings, and a shelf in the bathroom. A shelf in the fridge too, and a kitchen cupboard. But she'd said no.

The novelty would wear off soon, and he would want her gone as quickly and easily as possible.

xxxxx

Red square, blue square, red square, purple square. Blue square, yellow.

If there was a logic to the hallway carpet pattern, Dutton couldn't see it. It just kept going. Red square, purple square. And going and going and.

The hallway light sputtered like a dying star.

_Purple square, yellow square, soon you'll get to sleep. Yellow square, red square, blue yellow blue. Only feels like you've been walking forever 'cause you're tired enough to know it's true. Eat, sort, shower, sleep. Red, yellow, purple, blue._

(the color of the bruises too)

Bobby's door.

Dutton entered and relocked it, let her forehead fall against the polished wood.

Fuck all of this. Fuck it all to fucking hell.

_Eat, sort, shower, sleep._

She moved to the end table. A Tupperware, tiramisu and biscotti. She tipped it into the trash and wrote 'Thank you' on the note. Then she crumpled that up and threw it in the trash too.

She sat. Sorting time. Five dollars to food, five toiletries, fifty protection. Twenty to emergencies, fifty to debt. Divide the rest between protection, debt, and emergencies, including the sixty that—the sixty that…

She left the sixty on the end table, and went to shower.

She undressed swiftly, not looking at her body. The skirt was a loss, she'd toss it later.

The tiles were already wet, and Dutton slipped, banged her elbow on the floor. "Fuck!" It sounded unnaturally loud bouncing off the tiles. Blueblueblueblue. Square after square after square.

_Shower, sort, sleep._

She wrenched the water on and it rushed out with a rusty shriek of the pipes, and it felt good, searing singing hot burning it all away, and she rubbed the soap all over herself, scratched at her skin with her fingernails and the steam was rising stifling and the water pounding and she had to burn it scrub it scrape it all away.

_(hot burn singe scour scratch rasp score)_

There was a tickling at the back of her throat, and her breathing was getting uneven, but that was because she was so tired. Because it had been a long night.

She was fine.

She closed her eyes and it was black and neverending and nowhere and almost like sleep (nothing to do but breathe) and she could stay like this forever.

But she couldn't. So she said "fuck" again, but it didn't sound like her. She opened her mouth to try again but ended up just letting the water fill her mouth, scalding her tongue and throat.

She dug her fingernails into her scalp, worked in the shampoo once, then twice, then three times, scraping the night out of her hair. Picked up the soap again and rubbed the day out of her skin, marked long red tracks with her nails. Washed all the evidence down the drain.

By the time she noticed she was shivering, the bar of soap was half its original size.

Swearing under her breath, she forced her hands to grip and bend and twist the water faucet off. It got worse when she pulled back the shower curtain and the air-conditioning—stupid fuck, it was fucking mid-spring, who fucking turned on their air conditioning yet?—hit her full force. She fumbled into the sweats and T-shirt.  _Sort sleep._ Stumbled, still shivering, to the kitchen, where she stuffed the ruined skirt into the garbage on top of the tiramisu. Something about that image, black silk and smeared dessert, made her think of a slapstick dinner sequence, and she laughed. Maybe a little too long, and it started to choke at the back of her throat, but it was a laugh. See? She was fine.

So where to put the sixty dollars? Figure that out and she could sleep. Protection was almost taken care of for the week, but she did have to pay them day after tomorrow. Or stick it in debt, chip away another tiny piece. That'd be almost fucking poetic. Or hey, go with food. She could treat herself. Order a whole breakfast platter tomorrow morning, and the day after, and the day after. Why not? Didn't she deserve a little something for—

A sound wrenched at the back of her throat, suddenly and violently and without her permission. And now she could feel the tears coming, seeping out as she stared at the stupid fucking sixty dollars in her hands, and this was just fucking ridiculous and it wouldn't fucking stop, and _God,_ she just wanted it to stop—

"Eames?"

_Shit._

"It's nothing," she said, and her voice came out a little watery but otherwise fine.

"You're…crying."

"Sherlock Holmes would—" she hiccupped—" _marvel_  at your powers of observation."

A blur and a rustle as he sat down on the couch next to her. "What happened?"

"Nothing. Nothing happened that's out of the—it's not a big deal. It happens. Just—fuck!" She tried to breathe deep. She was still shivering. "It'll stop. It'll stop in a little bit, you can go back to bed—"

"Eames…please. Are you hurt, or—"

"Why do big men always think they can get their way?" she interrupted, and fuck, her voice was wavering, rising falling saying spilling over into things she wasn't going to say but—"You're always just—just, you just fucking loom over people until they do what you want and you don't even have to touch them—" She clamped her jaw shut, felt it seize, chatter, try to keep going.

A pause. She could feel his eyes on her.

"Was it…tonight, was he…a big man?"

"Barely taller than me." She barked a laugh. The bills were shaking in her hands."Had a gun, jumped me as I was leaving another john. Told me not to scream."

"He…raped you."

"Haven't you heard?" She laughed again, and it hurt her throat but it kept coming out. "It's not rape if, if he just leaves without paying. And he paid—he"— she swiped at her eyes, it just wasn't stopping—"he finished up and then he held the gun to, to my head for—for another, few seconds before he pushed me down and, and tossed the money on top of me." The words were tripping out now. "Why would—why would he do that? He could've paid up front and I'd have fucked him, he could've just  _asked_ -"

Bobby didn't move.

"And you—you know the really funny part?" She tossed the three twenties onto the coffee table. "Stupid fuck paid, paid twice as much as he needed to. Must've—" she choked—"been a, a really good lay, huh?"

"I'm sorry."

"It's nothing. I don't know why I'm being so—it's not like this hasn't happened before." She took a deep breath. Tried to steady her voice. "You should go back to, back to bed. I'm sorry th—that I woke you up."

"I wasn't asleep."

"Waiting up for me?" It was supposed to be a joke, but it came out flat and wrong and so she brought her hands up to her face to scrub at her eyes scrub it all away and she almost missed—

"Yes."

He said it very softly, the words taking a second to sink in.

He had been waiting up. For her.

His body was very close. She could feel the heat off his skin. Her tears were still seeping out.

And he was  _too close_ , to everything, and—

"Is this your fantasy?" The words came out fast, mechanism-springing. "Am I supposed to, to fall into your arms now and-let you carry me off into the sunset?"

He sucked in a sharp breath, and pulled back. "I wasn't trying to imply…"

She was cold again. Shivering, and she still couldn't—

"I could, I could do that, if you wanted." She looked up at him for the first time that night. His eyes were wary—frightened? Sad? "I'm not broken. This isn't a big deal." She ran her hand up his arm. "I could make you feel good."

"Eames—" he started, but he didn't pull away.

"I'm not some fragile little china doll," she said, her voice low and yes, this was the thing to do, she could feel it, the purpose in her heartbeat, the control. She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned in, teased his earlobe with her teeth. Felt him gasp, shiver. "I can do this. It'll be good. I'm not broken."

" _Eames_ …" he said again, and it was somewhere between a warning and a plea so she took it as an invitation, straddled him and ran her hands all over his chest, bit and sucked at his neck until all he was making were pleading begging helpless sounds as he ran his hands up and down her back. And she was mumbling "I'm not broken" against his skin as she licked it, into his shoulder and the crook of his neck and into his ear and he groaned and bit her collarbone through the T-shirt. She ground down against his rising hardness, and yes, this was it, this was right, this was—

His hand slipped under the shirt's hem and she tensed.

"Eames?"

"I'm fine." She forced herself to relax, rocked over him again, fumbled with the ties to his pants. His hand moved under her shirt and she gave a moan to let him know it was okay, and his palm skimmed over her ribcage—

"Oh God—" his voice broke, he sounded as if he were about to weep—"oh God, you're so  _skinny_ , Eames."

The words hit her like a slap to the face.

" _No_." She shoved him away, stood, her heartbeat pounding and blood rushing in her ears. "You don't get to feel sorry for me.  _You don't_. You don't ever get to do that!"

He reached for her. "Eames, I'm sorry, I—"

"And you don't get to call me that when I'm fucking you!" She turned her back on him, trying to breathe, stop the room spinning, think, shoes, shoes, where were her—

"Please—" And he grabbed her arm, and reflex! She slammed her elbow back into his gut, turned on him and it wasn't automatic anymore but it was helpless, fists against his chest and shoulders until he fell back against the couch and then she ran, out the door and down the stairs and she just kept going, lungs bursting and bare feet slapping against asphalt, didn't think she'd ever stop.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A.N. Just wanted to clear up some confusion I noticed in the reviews: the Connie's job dates back five years, but I didn't mean to imply that that was as far as the prostitution went back, or that Joe died five years ago. I'm keeping the timeline as close to canon as I can (remember the date in the first chapter), so Joe died almost ten years ago, which is also when the prostitution started (details to come in a later chapter).
> 
> Eames: Wait, I became a pro right after Joe died? I had no other career options?
> 
> Goren: She says it'll be explained…
> 
> Eames: What was with all that anatomy knowledge? Aren't hospitals always hiring nurses?
> 
> Goren: Maybe you were a naughty nurse.
> 
> Eames: What?
> 
> Goren: Ooh, remember in "Vanishing Act" when you wore those purple latex gloves? Maybe in this universe you—
> 
> Eames: Stop and consider how much you want to finish that sentence. Then consider how much you want to live.

Eventually she stopped running.

Mostly because of the flashing red and blue lights behind her.

The world shuddered and jolted around her as she skidded to a halt, her surroundings——snapping back into focus along with the sudden sharp stinging of her soles, smell of burnt pizza and gasoline flooding her nostrils, her ragged breathing sawing through the air. The siren switched off— _how long had that been going?_ —and she tried to breathe deep (just breathe) but in a second the officer would ( _fair play fair play asking for it)_ demand that she turn—

The sound of a window rolling down. "Hey, ma'am, are you in any…Dutton?"

Jeffries.  _Talk about a blessing and a curse._

Dutton screwed her game face on, locked it tight. Took a deep breath and turned. "The one and only."

"What's going on?"

"Nothing." Didn't even try to sell the lie. Jeffries'd either get the fuck out or she wouldn't.

"Right, you're just training for the Boston marathon. At three in the morning. Barefoot." A pause. Then the detective pulled back from the window, scooted back into the driver's seat. "Get in the car."

She crossed her arms. "You don't have anything on me."

"Dutton, if I was gonna arrest your ass, I would not be relying on you to do it for me." She took the keys out of the ignition, the engine's hum dying away. "Despite what my last performance evaluation may have said."

"What, then? Moran and Copeland talk me up so much you want to give it a shot?"

"Oh, for—your feet look like they've been through a goddamn blender. Get in the freaking car."

 _Oh, great, she's in do-gooder mode. No chance at all of getting her to piss off._ Dutton got into the car, slamming the passenger door behind her. "It's not a big deal. I don't want to talk about it."

"There's some hand disinfectant stuff in the glove compartment." Jeffries pulled some paper towels out from under her seat, passed them to Dutton. "Should probably clean that shit out of your feet before it gets infected."

It struck Dutton with depressing clarity that aside from Tawny, who she'd been walking the track with since nearly the beginning, Jeffries was probably the closest thing she had to a friend.

Which meant that the closest thing she had to a friend was someone who blackmailed her for information on a fairly regular basis.

Fuck.

There was silence for awhile, broken only by the crackle of the police radio and Dutton's occasional involuntary hiss when the disinfectant hit broken skin. She handed back the paper towels with a muttered "thanks." Jeffries nodded in acknowledgement and pulled out a pack of gum, offered Dutton a stick, which she took. Cinnamon.

As she chewed something occurred to Dutton. She glanced behind her in case Jeffries' partner was sitting in the perp half of the car for some reason. It was empty. "Where's Pippi Longstocking?"

"Pippi Longstocking?"

"The redhead."

Jeffries snorted. "Went on to bigger and better things. I've been flying solo for a few months now."

"Too bad." Dutton leaned back against the seat. "It was always fun making her blush."

"Like shooting fish in a barrel. And she used to bring you skittles, didn't she?"

"Every time I got hauled in." Dutton stared out the window, watching the pink neon sign—Angelo's Prima Pizzeria—make the shadows dance. "Used to bring pamphlets, too, women's shelters and all that." She scoffed. "I told her extra Skittles would be more helpful."

"Speaking of, if your current living arrangements aren't working out—"

"They're fine."

"Oh?" Just one syllable, but a syllable a shade less friendly. Dutton's spine stiffened. "Because this is not the ensemble I normally see you in."

"I said it wasn't a big deal." Dutton crossed her arms. She felt Jeffries' eyes combing her appearance for evidence, pausing at the scratch on her cheek from when she'd been pushed down onto the asphalt. "It was just a misunderstanding."

"Hmmm." The detective pursed her lips, thoughtful. "I don't think I've ever seen you so…protective…of a john before."

"I'm  _not_  protective," Dutton snapped. "And he's not a john—and that's all you're getting out of me," she added when Jeffries' eyebrows lifted.

"Fine." The other woman blew a bubble, popped it. "You know, when you're not made up like a slutty panda, you look great."

"Fuck you. Can I go now?"

"Sure." Jeffries reached for the keys. "Where to?"

"Right, that'll happen." Dutton reached for the door handle, but Jeffries was quicker and the lock clicked down. "Oh, for Chrissakes—"

"You're going to step on a nail and get tetanus," Jeffries informed her with a jarring gravity that reminded Dutton oddly of her mother.

"I'm not leading a cop straight to where I live."

"Damn, you caught me," Jeffries said sarcastically. "This was all a clever ruse to find the Batcave. Jesus, Dutton, how many times have I given you a Get Out of Jail Free card?"

 _Not as many times as you've hit me up for word on the street,_  Dutton thought.

Out loud she said, "Fine. You can take me halfway."

xxxxx

 _This would be so much easier if_ he _had hit_ me _._

308, steel numerals on white wood. She was standing in front of his door, willing her hands not to shake. It was so stupid how her hands were shaking again.

_I'd know how to do this if he'd hit me. Go back in, act contrite and take whatever he dished out, be gone five minutes after he left for work the next day._

_But I hit him._

What should she care anyway? She had always known this wasn't going to last. This had always been temporary.

She raised her hand to knock. Felt her stomach twist sharp and hard, lowered her hand and tried to keep the carpet squares from swimming.

_Just lift up your hand and knock. How fucking pathetic are you? Just lift up your hand and knock. He's not going to hurt you. Just knock. You'll be able to expl—_

There was blood on the carpet.

Oh God.

She looked down the hallway and she saw it now, splotches of angry red-brown in a shuffling line, camouflaged against the other spots and stains on the colored squares.

He'd gone out after her.

He'd gone out after her and cut up his feet bad enough to bleed all the way up to the third floor.

Oh,  _fuck._

She rapped at the door with her knuckles. "Bobby?"

No answer.

Fuck fuck  _FUCK_. She started knocking harder. "Bobby? It's me. Are you okay? Damn it, open up!"

Still no answer.

She tried the knob, and it turned easily beneath her fingertips, what the fuck was that idiot thinking leaving his door unlocked in New York City, anyone could come in and hurt him—

_You hurt him._

_He should've known better,_  she snapped back at herself, closing the door behind her, click-snap! the lock firmly shut. "Bobby? Are you home?"  _I told him not to pity me, I told him and I told him—_

(his hands had pressed warm and gentle on her back, and his eyes had been so wide and very brown)

—and she followed the jagged rust-red trail across the linoleum and the carpet (and she could feel something building in her chest, she was going to crack open with how it was pressing against her ribs and breastbone) to his bedroom door…

She hesitated only a second before pushing it open.

The room was empty.

_What the everloving fuck._

Drips and smears—lighter now, further apart—dotted the off-white carpet right up to the perfectly made up bed. Eames flipped the light switch and saw that the blankets were covered in a thin film of dust.

She looked around the room again, just in case she had somehow missed him standing in a corner. Nothing. Just a dresser, stark and functional. Bookshelves, crammed full. A lamp. A window. And the bed…

…the bed that was, actually, a lot higher off the ground than beds typically were.

And that was, come to think of it, not  _perfectly_  made if you considered how the blankets were pulled away from the wall side of the bed so that they hung down to touch the floor on the other side…

Eames held very still, and stopped breathing. And she heard it, faint and reedy and slightly frantic.

In—out—in—out—inoutinoutinininininout—

_No way._

She crouched down and lifted up the red and black wool comforter, and there, curled away towards the wall in a tight knot was—

"Oh, Goren."

Something painful was blooming in her throat, and it spilled out into her voice and it was suddenly so hard to breathe.

His own breath hitched, a shudder going through his spine. "Go…away."

Didn't hesitate. "No."

"GO AWAY!"

She jerked backwards instinctively at the unexpected roar, but he was shaking all over now, like he was going to crumble into pieces.

Eames crawled under the bed, steeling herself as the blanket dropped behind her.  _It's not like the trunk…it's not like the trunk…I can get out anytime I want, I can just scoot backwards and be out in the light again, it's not like the trunk…_

She realized she was grinding her teeth and gulping, and she clenched her jaw tight, forced her breaths to even.  _There is enough air. There is enough air, dammit!_

There was still the little part of her that was trying to scream, that wanted to claw around in the darkness until it ripped its way out of the smalltighttrappedsuffocating space, and she gripped it tight and pushed it down and told it  _STAY._ And then she reached out to touch Bobby's shoulder.

He twitched away.

She swallowed the momentary stab of irritation and hurt, and switched tacks. "You should clean your feet before they get infected."

No response.

"So, you do this often?"

He curled away farther from her, and she thought he wasn't going to answer. But then: "Since…Nicki. Since she…off and on." His teeth chattered. "It just gets so—when, when I was little this was a s—safe, safe place to go and—" Bobby's voice cracked, and she could see the outline of his shoulders constrict.

"Look—"

"So you're right, okay?" he interrupted. "Everything you've been—I'm pathetic. I'm not a man. I don't know anything. You don't need to— My wallet's on the counter, you can take it and I won't be able to stop you."

"You know damn well I—" Eames cut herself off with a huff. He was baiting her, and she had gone for it. "You know I don't want that," she continued as calmly as she could. She tried to touch his shoulder again, but for the second time he pulled away. "Look, I'm not trying to jump you again. I'm just trying to help out here."

A watery laugh. "Even though you hate me?"

"For God's sake, stop wallowing, Goren," she snapped. "I don't hate you." She took another deep breath, chose her words carefully. "I'll go in the morning if you want me to, okay? But I'm not leaving you alone right now."

Bobby didn't say anything to that so she curled her body parallel to his, keeping a foot of space between them, and rested her head on her hands. Breathed slow and watched the rise and fall of his breaths, willed them to even and steady their rhythm to match her own.

Eames had just gotten used to the near-silent medley of their heartbeats and breathing and the creaking of the old apartment around them, when Bobby broke it with a whisper. "Why…why did you…?"

She knew what he meant. "I thought you wanted me to," she told his back. "I thought…I'd finally figured out your fantasy. Why you kept me around." Eames eyed him for a reaction, but couldn't discern one. "Why did you…"

A long, shaky breath. "I thought…you wanted me to."

She had to bite back the retort that she didn't need his pity. He already knew that.

"You're not wrong," she said softly instead. She moved forward, didn't touch him with her hands this time but leaned against his back. He didn't pull away, but she felt his muscles tense under his shirt. "It was—I wanted control, over  _something_ , and I knew—God, I know how this sounds, but…I knew I could control you. That you wouldn't try to control me."

His breathing had become labored again

"And I don't hate you," she murmured into his shirt. "I just…can't figure out what to do with you, in my head. What your angle is. But you're—you've been decent. So I don't hate you."

She wrapped her left arm around him, and he didn't pull away.

"Do you have anything you could take?" she asked. "To help? Pills, or…"

He shook his head violently. "No pills. I won't—no pills."

"Okay," she said. "Okay." And she held him a little tighter.

And it was…not bad. Lying there, next to him. Every once in awhile she'd feel how small the space under the bed was and have to squeeze her eyes shut in the darkness  _(I can breathe I can breathe I can)_ , but when she concentrated on the sound of Bobby's heart beating, and the solidity of his chest beneath her fingertips, the space would expand again and it was just quiet and calm and warm and not bad at all.

"I just wanted someone not to die," Bobby said, jolting her from her thoughts. His voice seemed unnaturally loud in the night.

"What?"

"Everyone… everyone I know, I c—care about, is dead." She could feel the shudder run down his frame, the aftershocks skittering down her body. "Ten years ago…my dad. Two years, my—my mom, a—and now Nicki. My nephew went, he went missing after my mom died, and my br—brother, I haven't seen him in months, and I wouldn't help him then—everybody's _dying_ , and I can't make—I just wanted one person that I could save."

 _Oh, Bobby._ She felt her eyes burn, a dull ache behind them. "Nobody can ever save anyone."

_(The monitor is flat and hopeless and neverending, and she is just sitting there because it is impossible, it is just a picture with blue and green that will go away if she closes her eyes but she can't close her eyes)_

_( because she can't look away from Joe)_

"All anybody can ever do is just…be there, with someone. For as long as they can." And then she had to stop talking, or else her voice was going to do something embarrassingly close to cracking.

Bobby's hand reached up to cover hers where it lay on his chest. And it was…not bad.

"Be here with me?" he asked.

It came out small and uncertain, and beneath her fingertips she felt him fragile as spun glass.

She nodded against his back.

"Okay."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eames: Cuddling? We're _cuddling_? I'm _spooning_ you?
> 
> Goren: Well, it is an alternate universe.
> 
> Eames: I don't care how alternate it is, there's no way—
> 
> Goren: Honestly, I can't believe you're focusing on that rather than her ham-handed attempts to make Jeffries a likeable character, just because she liked her on SVU.
> 
> Eames: Good point. Also, the reference to AU!Wheeler having a crush on me—are we supposed to believe that the woman has a crush on me in this universe too? The I'm-a-thirty-dollar-prostitute universe?
> 
> Goren: She's probably just getting started with the random shoehorning in of characters.
> 
> Eames: Oh, joy.
> 
> Goren: We're probably due for Ross the deli shop owner and Logan the ballerina any page now.
> 
> Eames: Shoot me. Just shoot me.

"Eames?"

"Mm-hmm?" she mumbled. She felt nice and warm. The world smelled like Old Spice and bookpaste.

"I, uh, I have to get up now."

"Mmkay." She blinked, blearily, her left arm wrapping tighter around him as she tried to use his torso to leverage herself up—"Ow! Dammit." The bed. Oh, right. Under the bed. Last night, with the almost-sex and the freaking out and coming back, and—ow. Shit.

"Are you alright?"

Eames realized she was still clutching at his shirt and let go quickly. "Fine, yeah."

She scooted backwards, away from him and out into the open air. Stood, wincing a little as her joints protested the night on the floor. It was still fairly dark, the sky outside a dusky pollution-cloud brown. The numerals on the clock radio glinted '5:35' in angry red.

Bobby came out, rubbing his neck. "Sorry, just, I have to open up the library—"

"No, no, it's fine." She looked at the carpet. The carpet, with the bloodstains. Oh, fuck. "Are your feet alright?"

"What? They're fine." He followed her gaze down. "Oh. The carpet."

"I'll clean it," she said quickly. "I don't have to go to Connie's for awhile. You can just show me where the cleaning stuff is and I'll tackle it before I go to work."

"You don't have to—"

"No, it's my fault, I mean." She made herself swallow. "I mean, I want to."

A long pause. "Okay."

The smoggy dirty-brown morning light was stealing up over the windowsill, touching everything and making it real and broken and fragile.

"I should shower," he said.

"Oh. Right." Oh, right. He needed to change. "Right," she repeated. "I'll just—the couch."

He reached out, fingers stopping barely an inch from her wrist. Still halting her. "I'll…make coffee, after…okay?"

"Okay."

xxxxx

"… _Eames?"_

" _Mmm?"_

"…"

" _Bobby? Did you…"_

" _Can you…"_

" _Sure."_

xxxxx

Breakfast. Eating with him, for a change. Coffee, and toast with butter. A bowl of strawberries, store bought. You could tell because they were white inside, and tasted like nothing before a dusting of sugar.

He hadn't turned on the TV this morning. The sips of coffee and clink of spoons echoed off the linoleum, were swallowed by the carpet.

Eames remembered coming back from the coffee shop two mornings ago, the Discovery Channel on, David Attenborough narrating the lives of hermit crabs. Their soft pale brown bodies, so small and fragile out of their shells, scuttling side to side across the open sand.

There was so much  _space_ now, between them and around them.

"Thank you," Bobby said, startling her. He was not looking at her but at a button on his shirt. His fingers fiddling with the button, twisting it back and forth. "For—not just for that, not just last night, but—"

She could hear the brush-off coming.

"It's okay if you didn't mean it," she said.

His head snapped up, he blinked. "What?"

"That 'stay with me' stuff. If you still want me to leave. That's fine."

"Do you still want to leave?"

She wanted to smack him, is what she wanted, for making her say it out loud. But she steeled herself, tightened her jaw. Stared at the bowl of strawberries. "No."

When she looked up, he had a big goofy grin on his face.

"Careful, your face'll freeze that way."

Still grinning. "I don't mind."

"You look like Odie from  _Garfield."_

He laughed. Looked down, and fiddled with his napkin. "It's just—good. That you want to, to stay, it's…good, really—good. I'm glad."

She rolled her eyes. But she didn't want to smack him anymore.

And it was oddly easier now to breathe.

xxxxx

"… _Eames?"_

" _Mmm-hmm. Do you need…"_

" _Could you…?"_

" _Sure."_

_She rolls over in bed, and then rolls over again, until she's against the wall, stomach against the mattress. Slides her arm down into the darkness, fumbles till she hits his shoulder. Squeezes tight, lets him know she's got him._

_The breath he pulls in is shaky, but deep. "Thank you."_

" _What I'm here for," she says dryly. The words are muffled by the pillow, but he still hears her, and laughs. It is less shaky this time._

xxxxx

Flattering as it was that her declaration had apparently given Bobby Goren the equivalent of a sugar high—the man was actually fucking  _humming_ , and tapping his stirring spoon on the table in counterpoint as he read the paper—Eames made sure to pin him down on his terms before he left for work.  _Be here with me_  was, after all, about as open-ended a request as you could get.

She didn't like surprises.

"Well, I was just thinking y-you'd sleep in my room, at night. You can take the bed if you want, I don't need…it's mostly just—hearing you there, breathing, and…and, knowing you're there. That someone's…that you're there."

He took a breath, as if about to say something else, but then didn't. Eames prompted him. "And?"

"And maybe…" He cocked his head to the left. His long fingers drummed on the rim of his coffee mug, a little faster than before. "On the bad nights, you could…reach down, s-so I could feel your arm. And know you're there."

"And that's it?"

He looked up. If you only looked at his eyes, you'd think he couldn't be a year over seven. "You could talk to me."

"About what?"

"Oh, Life. The Universe. Everything." He paused; the left corner of his mouth twitched up. "That was a joke. Well, a reference."

"I'm a hooker, not an encyclopedia."

xxxxx

" _Eames? You…are you awake?"_

" _Mmm. Am now." Face pressed into the pillow. She wiggles the fingers of her left arm in the air, feels them brush against the sleeve of his T-shirt. Grips it and frets the material between thumb and forefinger, a soothing circular motion. "What now?"_

" _Just…just, checking."_

_Circle and circle, thumb around forefinger. "Hmm."_

" _How was—how was your day?"_

" _Too boring to think about at two in the morning," she mumbles into the pillowcase. Feels the mattress shake, just slightly, from his chuckles below. "'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day…'"_

_The mattress bumps up a bit again; she's startled him. She smirks against the cotton._

" _I didn't know you—uh—Macbeth, huh?"_

" _Shakespeare is still Shakespeare at community college, Marian the Librarian."_

xxxxx

Eames snagged a section of the newspaper from Bobby, tried to start reading an article about gentrification. Cleared her throat a little when she got to the second paragraph. "You want to change the terms of this—thing we've got, any reason, you want something else, you tell me. We talk about it." She looked back up at him, fixed him with a glare. "You don't spring anything on me."

He nodded, eyes wide and serious and grave. "Okay."

"Good. As long as you remember that." She looked back down at the paper.  _Local residents expressed concern that—_

"I am sorry," he said, very softly. It took a second for her to realize he had spoken. "A-about last night, I shouldn't have taken advantage—"

She silenced him with a loud rustling turn of several pages at once. "Last night was…last night," she said, facing the newsprint. She kept her voice calm. "There's no reason for either of us to have to bring it up again."

xxxxx

" _So, you've been to college."_

" _A year and a half. Didn't finish."_

" _Why not?"_

_She withdraws her arm, rolls over onto her back and stares at the ceiling. There are spiderweb cracks all over the plaster. It's graying and dead; one good shove and it'd go. She sighs. "Why are you interested?"_

" _You…you said you'd talk to me. Life, the Universe, and Ev—everything."_

_She sighs again. She doesn't mean to, just—fuck, she's tired. But she's not going to be able to get any sleep now either. "You just couldn't be a normal guy and ask for sex, could you?"_

" _Eames…"_

" _You really want to know?"_

" _Yes." No hesitation._

_So she tells him._


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eames: Where the hell has she been?
> 
> Goren: She left some sort of lame excuse in her last story about being sucked into classic Doctor Who.
> 
> Eames: Classic? Like, the stuff from the seventies? With the monsters made of bubblewrap, and the crazy guy in the scarf, and endless, endless bondage subtext?
> 
> Goren: …yup, I think that about sums up its appeal for her.

She didn't tell him everything, of course.

She wasn't born yesterday.

Information was power and she didn't intend to ever give anyone any power over her again. No matter how likeable or decent they seemed. She'd made that mistake with Kevin, and look where that got her.

So she gave Bobby the Cliff's Notes: "My dad…he was double-dipping. Working for the city while drawing a pension. He had to pay it back. There wasn't any more money."

She remembered wondering once if she'd ever be able to say those words without that bitter tang on her tongue, without her throat going tight.

"And then Joe asked me to marry him, and the money I was saving up…our families wanted a big wedding. Catholics. What're you gonna do?"

A snort, half amusement, half commiseration.

"So I started saving up again, but there was rent, and bills…and my mom had a stroke, and her insurance didn't cover nearly enough. After awhile, the things I wanted—they didn't matter. They were selfish. I let them go."

Maybe she did tell him a little more than she intended. But it was easy in the dark, lying on top of the sheets and hearing him breathe below the mattress. He was there but not there, and the more she talked the more she felt as though she was floating on a cloud, on a different plane and just barely connected. There but not there.

His bed was soft, and warm, and clean. The sheets smelled like cheap lilac detergent, two for six dollars at Walgreens.

Bobby was quiet for so long she thought that maybe he had fallen asleep, and she was almost insulted, until he said, "What did you…what were you studying to be?"

"You'll laugh."

"I won't. Promise."

"Vet tech. You know, assisting the veterinarian with procedures and operating a lot of the equipment." She rolled onto her side, facing away from the wall. The lamplights outside cast a baleful yellow glow through his window. "I really liked animals."

"Why would I—"

"Because it was stupid," she cut him off. "Even when my dad was helping, I still had to work two jobs, and for what? Falling asleep in class, barely hanging onto my grades. Always arguing with my family or with Joe because I couldn't spend time with them." She could feel it all coming back, the anger and hurt, broken crockery and barbed words cutting above the tinny warble of the ten inch black and white television in her family's kitchen. Bile in her throat. Her hands clenched in the blankets. "It wasn't worth it."

"You…you can't believe that…"

"Don't tell me what I can't believe," she snapped. The floating here-not-here feeling was entirely gone now. She pulled the blankets tighter around her. She wished she had just changed the subject when he'd pushed for her to talk to him. "You don't know, okay? Any of this, you—you don't know."

Silence, then:

"I think you would've made a great vet tech."

She wanted to tell him to shut up, but her throat and chest had gone all tight again.

xxxxx

Things were tense the rest of the week, Bobby tiptoeing around her and her not terribly inclined to talk to him at all, let alone broker any kind of peace. If  _be here with me_  translated to  _relive all the bad decisions in your life for my listening pleasure_ , then fine. She'd deal. But no one said she had to be happy about it, or make him feel better about prying into her past for some voyeuristic kick.

On Saturday she woke to the smell of really good coffee. Her suspicions that this was some sort of belated peacemaking gesture on his part were confirmed when she entered the kitchen and saw the platter of raspberry and cheese Danishes on the table.

There was also a large cardboard box, right in front of her normal seat.

"What's this?"

Bobby glanced up from the newspaper before looking back down, studiedly casual. But the fingers of his right hand were twisting at the tablecloth. "Tit for tat."

"I see." Eames poured herself a cup of coffee, and took a cheese Danish. She ate them at the counter.

Behind her, she could hear his foot start to drum, faster and faster.

A spirit of perversity made her linger over the pastry, though her habit was usually to eat as quickly as she could. When she was finished, she made her way over to the box and opened it.

Eames wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but it definitely hadn't been…what was all this? She sifted through the stiff and yellowed papers, intrigued despite herself. Eviction notices, hospitalization records, foster home paperwork…

She noticed the names. William. Frances. Frank.

Robert.

"You didn't have to do this," she said quietly. She shut the box, but didn't look up from it just yet. Her vision was slightly blurry; she blinked, hard, and it cleared.

"I…I didn't want you to think this was a one-way street."

"How about…" She took a breath, and looked up. "How about I just ask questions, when I want to know. And you have to answer me, like I do with you."

He met her eyes. "Okay."

xxxxx

So they fell into another rhythm together, with questions in the night. Tit for tat, her above and him below. Breathing, and asking, and answering, and it was like walking on a tightrope with all the things you might accidentally reveal, but somehow it was safe enough to still drift off to sleep.

That night:

"How did you meet Joe?"

"He was cousins with the prom king. Crashed the after party, brought booze, made me laugh, held my hair while I was puking up the cheap booze he brought. What every girl dreams of."

And not ten minutes later, startling even herself (she had told herself she wouldn't ask):

"How long were you in the foster system?"

"Not long. My dad could…he could charm anyone."

Another night:

"Do you…still see your family? Ever?"

"My father's dead." The years had made this impossible fact real to her, but the words would always sound strange on her tongue. Hard, blocky. Inert. "My mother isn't going to wake up, no matter how much money they throw at her—and they haven't got a lot to throw. The rest—I won't add to their problems."

And another night:

"How did you get the scar on your neck?"

"My dad came home. He saw…I was supposed to be watching my mother. I wasn't supposed to be reading."

She almost always ended up telling him more than he told her, and sometimes in the cold light of morning she was terrified at her idiocy, at the things she had let slip from her sleep-addled mouth. But then she'd catch him darting a quick little did-I-really-tell-her-that look at her too, and somehow that settled her nerves into a manageable hum.

He never asked her the question she was sure he wanted to most of all.

Five a.m., a June night so warm the window was open:

"Eames?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you alright with—I mean, are you…are we okay?"

"As okay as we'll ever be."

And on and on and on, above and below, questions and answers in the night.

xxxxx

"Why is there a cake in the freezer?"

Eames smirked into her coffee. "It's for you. Congratulations."

"What—"

"You didn't think I wouldn't find out about this, did you?" She flicked the leaflet out from where she'd been keeping it under the newspaper. "Securing funding for a Roald Dahl room in the Children's Section—well done. I think my favorite part is your quote about 'the battle to retain whimsy in an uncaring world.'"

Bobby blushed like a tomato. "They, they smoothed out a lot of the things from the interview, made me sound—how did you get that?"

Eames' smirk grew. "Out of all the bullshit community newsletters, out of all the pretentious coffee shops Gavin could have taken me to, in all of New York City, I just happened to pick up this one."

It was a game that one of them—she couldn't remember which through the haze of sleepy memories—had started one night, trying to fit as many references to a movie into a conversation as possible. Bobby's lips twitched as he considered his response, settling himself in his chair. He tapped the leaflet. "You know this doesn't amount to…a hill of beans."

"Play it again, Sam."

"That line's, uh, not actually in the movie."

"Woody Allen lied to me? Damn." She set the flyer back down and went back to reading the paper. "Well, anyway, good for you."

"Thanks, for, for going to the trouble. I appreciate it. I…really do."

Eames rolled her eyes. "It's not like I baked it; there was a promotion going on at Dairy Queen."

"Still…thank you."

She made the mistake of looking up at him and into his eyes, which were wide and brown and sincere in a way that made you want to put them beside 'earnest' in the dictionary. She looked back down at the newspaper quickly, quashing the lump in her throat. "Yeah, well, it was cake or a blowjob, and I hate to bring work home."

He almost fell off his chair. " _Please_  don't say things like that."

"Relax, Marian, I'm not going to sully your virtue."

"No, that wasn't—I mean…" He righted himself in the chair, leaned forward a little. "You don't have to…deflect like that. With compliments, I mean—you deserve it. You're a good person."

"Is this the part where we sing a Disney song about friendship?" It came out of her mouth before she could stop it, and Bobby's face fell. She reached out and covered his hand with hers, gave it a quick squeeze. "I'm—it's a work in progress, okay?"

"Okay."

xxxxx

A week later. She'd just started out of the gas station, newly changed into her night-shift clothes, the attendant slumped against the defective hand-dryer in post-coital bliss. She was thinking about her lunch break, when Bobby had dropped by unannounced and tried to buy her a churro ("Miguel is one of our library paiges, really, uh, entrepreneurial, just got this pushcart…" "I know it brightens your day when you can soothe my poverty-wracked life, but I think I can buy my own damn churro"). The ensuing monologue about the varied history and preparation of Latin American pastries was made entirely worth it when Bobby's jaw dropped as she carried on a conversation with Miguel in grammatically perfect, if heavily accented, Spanish. ("Where did you—" "Hooking can be a very cosmopolitan job, you know.")

Her cellphone rang. Speak of the devil. "Hey, Bobby."

"Ea—uh, I need a favor."

"What is it?" He had called before sometimes in the early morning to see if she was alright, but never just when she was just heading out. A thought occurred to her. "If you're planning on having company tonight, there are places I can stay."

"What? No, uh…I need you to go see a friend."

_(Sitting in the chair across from the mahogany desk, her blouse unbuttoned. He's not even looking at her as he zips up his pants. "I have some friends I think you should meet…")_

"Are you still there? Hello?"

Dutton took a deep breath. "I know you can't mean what it sounded like you mean," she said carefully. Her grip was too tight on the phone and she couldn't seem to relax it. "Because if you did, then you're coming home to an empty apartment."

"What? She's a lawyer, my friend, but she's not answering her cell, and, uh, the thing is…" His breathing had sped up, and Dutton could practically see the way he was jittering, bouncing a little on his heels or in his chair. "I'm down at the station. I got arrested."


End file.
